Posted by
Steve Hamm in
City leaders are typically re-elected based on how well they fulfill basic needs such as making the buses run on time and fighting crime. So how do you get them to pay attention to long-term strategic considerations–especially at a time of economic hardship? That’s a challenge advocates of progress face as they try to convince leaders that strategic investments in the future will help their communities become or remain healthy over the long haul.
At IBM, we believe that taking advantage of advances in instrumentation, interconnectivity, and data analytics is an essential element of any city vitalization plan. One of the IBMers who is wrestling with the priority-setting issue is Rashik Parmar, an IBM distinguished engineer who heads up an initiative aimed at making Smarter Cities projects appealing to government leaders. He and some his colleagues, including distinguished engineer Colin Harrison and corporate strategist Martin Fleming, find that Mazlow’s hierarchy of needs (graphic above) is a good thinking aid.
Parmar points out that there are three drivers of action in communities that line up pretty well with the elements of Mazlov’s hierarchy. Issues: Fundamental things like crime and transportation that determine the livability of a city correspond with levels one and two. Investment: Government, non-profit, or commercial investments that build and maintain infrastructure line up with levels three and four. Inspiration: The creation of a unifying, shared vision that defines the path to a “better place” corresponds to level five–peak experiences.
The winning argument in favor of strategic investments comes when you can point to long-term improvements in livability that result in part from fulfilling aspirational needs. Academic Richard Florida in his Creative Class writings makes the argument in a general sense: The cities that are most successful are the ones that attract and retain artists, scientists, and other kinds of innovators. Can anybody point to strong data proof points in your city that back up this argument? If so, please weigh in.
I was struck today by a Thomas Friedman’s column today in the New York Times. He’s writing about the Tea Party and it’s angry demands for less government and lower taxes. I don’t want to get into the politics of the column, but one of his observations about what he sees as a necessity for the United States also applies to cities. He calls for a plan to revitalize the nation:
“To me, that is a plan that starts by asking: what is America’s core competency and strategic advantage, and how do we nurture it? Answer: It is our ability to attract, develop and unleash creative talent. That means men and women who invent, build and sell more goods and services that make people’s lives more productive, healthy, comfortable, secure and entertained than any other country.”
To me, these are the questions that city leaders ought to be asking themselves, as well. I believe that the bold and smart ones among them will make the plans and investments now that will pay off a decade from now, and pay dividends for many years into the future.
But, easy for me to say…
What do you think? How do city leaders go about asking the right questions? How do they find ways way to make the plans and investments that will result in Smarter Cities?
Posted by
Karl Roche in
Back in June I mentioned how Coventry was running the worlds first city-wide Jam to open up a conversation with residents and business to find innovative ways to make the city smarter.
A month on and 2,000 posts later, IBM and Coventry are teaming up to make the ideas raised in CovJam real and transforming Coventry over the next 30 years.
Posted by
vineeta durani in
This year alone, more than 1200 exabytes of digital information will be created. And with just one exabyte equal to one trillion novels, companies are faced with the challenge of getting their arms around massive amounts of data. Data that is being generated by their internal business applications, their IT systems, social networks and various other external sources such as the nearly 1 trillion internet-connected devices.
While some organizations struggle with this deluge of data, others are turning it into opportunity. Today, IBM is launching a new series of client success stories, shining a light on how businesses and governments from around the world are turning mountains of data into concrete opportunities to better serve their clients, improve citizen service and innovate in ways that have never been possible. And with more than 250,000 organizations around the world using IBM analytics, this is just the beginning.
Analyze This: DC Water
How do you monitor a water system that in part dates back to the mid 1800s? How do emergency responders know that the fire hydrant next to a burning building will work?
The answer doesn’t lie in expensive infrastructure projects or overhauling of water management systems — it lies in connecting the dots with relevant data. Predictive analytics is helping DC Water analyze enormous amount of data on weather conditions, maintenance and hundreds of other variables to uncover usage patterns and spot problems, like water main breaks, before they occur.
To learn more, visit the new IBM business analytics channel on You Tube: www.youtube.com/user/ibmbusinessanalytics
Posted by
Steve Hamm in
When communities set out on massive, multidimensional civic improvement projects, a necessary first step is gaining agreement from the principle players in government, business, and the non-profit sphere on what they want the city or region to be–its brand, if you will. This is a conclusion IBM executives have drawn from dozens of Smarter Cities engagements in communities scattered all over the globe.
That ambition is more easily stated than accomplished, but some of the work IBM is doing in Poland points to lessons that could help community leaders elsewhere.
Katowice, with a population of about 300,000, is the unofficial capital of the Silesa region in southern Poland, which is known for its coal mining, steel making, and other heavy industries. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the region has suffered economically. Its coal mines, in particular, became less competitive, resulting in a loss of tens of thousands of mining jobs.
Fortunately, the city and the region have some inspired and energetic leaders, among them Katowice Mayor Piotr Uszok. The goal is to shift to high-tech and service industries–supported by improvements in the transportation system. Uszok asked IBM for help in devising an economic renewal plan, and, as a first step, we sent in a five-person team from our Corporate Service Corps to help size up the situation.
The CSC, which has been called a “business” version of the Peace Corps, sends small groups of IBMers with diverse talents into countries or cities to help them craft economic development strategies, beef up government services, and improve systems such as transportation, health, and water. Some of the teams, such as the one that went to Poland, are made up entirely of executives–bringing a higher level of expertise and management skills to the projects.
Visiting Katowice this spring, the team engaged with a group of community leaders who have been jointly developing regional strategies for several years. At the same time, they’re open to new ideas, particularly along the themes of attracting foreign investors to create new jobs, improving the quality of life, and updating the transportation system.
The team members met with about 200 people from government, academia, and businesses. From these conversations they drafted a set of recommendations, which they presented to mayor Uszok in a marathon five-hour meeting. (The mayor demonstrated his commitment to strategic planning by continuing the meeting even though the city was under a severe flood threat.)
How do you involve thousands of people in shaping how a city should be run? In a word, Jam.
Coventry City Council in the UK is running the first city based Jam, to take the conversation beyond city leader to its citizens. Why? Because none of us have all the answers. Pulling from a wider pool of people, experiences, backgrounds and expertise will give Coventry an edge in finding out what it needs to provide to its people and business.
Image via Wikipedia
Coventry CC is calling their event the CovJam, and it will be taking place on 29 and 30 June and 1 July.
It looks to be a great event for the people in and around Coventry (or even from Coventry) to shape the way they live. A real step on the way to building a smarter city in the heart of the UK.
If you would like to be one of those taking part, please e-mail:communications@coventry.gov.uk with the subject line “CovJam”
What’s a Jam?
A Jam is an online discussion (think brainstorming on an epic scale) around a group of pre-selected themes, that an organisation wants to find innovative answers to. Within the themes there are many discussions happening at once. The event is driven by specially invited subject matter experts, stakeholders and hosts, that help highlight interesting and valuable contributions from people like you and me, taking part in the Jam.
As you may know we have had lots of Jams in IBM, its become part of the culture and especially this version which is a mini-Jam, essentially a more focused Jam with fewer themes.
This Jam will be covering the following themes:
- The rebirth of Coventry: The urban design for a future city. What do we do to the centre of Coventry to make people want to live here, work here, shop here, socialise here?
- Sent to Coventry: Be inventive. What does Coventry really want to be known for?
- Aspiring Coventry: Yes we can! Aiming high and fulfilling our potential. How can the people of Coventry believe in themselves and their city?
- Community Cohesion: Getting on together and celebrating diversity. As the city continues to grow and change, will it remain relaxed and at peace with itself with its citizens feeling a strong sense of place and able to get along with each other
- Citizens in the driving seat: The relationship between the state and the individual
Good luck to everyone taking part – Jams are usually a blast.
More details on the Coventry CC web site.
Posted by
vineeta durani in
In the past 12 months alone, New York City office workers have spent the equivalent of 22.5 YEARS either waiting for an elevator or stuck in one, according to a new IBM survey. Why? Because office buildings have failed to keep pace with the revolution in automation that pervades modern life.
Architects have become experts at designing for green. They are envisioning more environmentally sustainable designs on how buildings should be situated, what materials should be used, how to meet LEED specifications, etc. But the reality is, while they use data and modeling to design buildings that will perform efficiently, they never really know in the end how things will turn out. Because its not just up to them.
Consider the players when it comes to building a building:
- There are the architects, as stated.
- Then there are the engineering design & construction firms who take the design from the architect and build it. They can conceivably make a lot of changes to the design of a building along the way. Think: “Hey Joe, the wall doesn’t fit!” “Just move it till it fits!” (By the way these changes aren’t always documented.)
- There are the mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) contractors. They manage the cabling and plumbing of the building. Oh and by the way, they may have to make some changes along the way too. (And did I mention they use different types of design tools than the architects?)
- There are the engineering subsystem companies that manage different parts of the building, like the HVAC systems, the elevators, etc.
- The metering and sensing companies handle meters outside of the building that monitor utilities, and meters inside the building to check out the temperature, CO2 emissions, pH of the water, etc.
- Then of course there integrated building management system companies that gather a lot of data from the building.
- And the owner operators…
But here’s the deal: These guys are all experts in their field, and they work well together in theory. But they all are making changes along the way that may not be captured and shared. By the time a building gets built, the owner operator may not have the real view of the building design because its changed so much from the original architects’ view. And think about the MEP contractors who come back three to six months after the buildings been built, to see how it’s performing. They may realize the building is using 20 percent more energy than originally planned, but they missed the boat over the last few months because they weren’t keeping track of changes along the way and maintaining building equipment accordingly.
The fact of the matter is buildings can and should be retrofitted. But a real view of the how the building is designed and operating is needed to make better sense of the changes that need to be made. Just think if you were monitoring your weight regularly, you’d know if you gained 5 lbs that its time to start exercising, instead of waiting till you gain 30 to figure it out. Same goes for buildings: if we can help the experts that design and build, view integrated energy management and maintenance information in real-time, we all could spend a little less time in elevators.
What about Los Angeles, Atlanta, Dallas?
- Los Angeles: 16% of LA respondents say they have been stuck in an elevator in their office building in the last 12 months, with 16% of that group stuck for 20 minutes or more (versus the national average of 9%).
- Atlanta: 14% of those who work in buildings with elevators have been stuck in an elevator in the last 12 months, spending the equivalent of 6.2 YEARS either waiting for an elevator or stuck in one.
- Dallas: In the past 12 months, Dallas/Fort Worth office workers have spent the equivalent of 7.9 YEARS either waiting for an elevator or stuck in one. 13% of Dallas/Fort Worth office workers who work in elevator buildings say they’ve been stuck in an elevator in the last 12 months. Of those, 19% say they were stuck longer than 20 minutes, the high for the survey. 36% were stuck for longer than 10 minutes, also the high for the survey.
To see what’s happening with buildings in your city, check out the IBM Smarter Buildings Survey for more info on how cities stack up…
Survey Methodology: IBM conducted an online survey of 6,486 adults working full- or part-time in office buildings in 16 major US cities from March 30 – April 12, 2010. The survey was conducted to gauge how “intelligent,” automated and Green office buildings are in the country. The survey looks at a number of key factors, including building security, office temperature, use of alternative energy sources and other environmental and conservation issues, and elevator reliability. The survey had a city by city margin of error of 5%.
Posted by
Karl Roche in
Is your city looking a bit rough around the edges? Do you wonder what it will be like in 20 years time? Does it even feel like your city?
After moving to London 17 years ago it took me a while to feel like this was home and that I had a right to complain or think that things could be done better – possibly because I lived in a new borough every year. I suppose only now that one of my kids attends a school and we have been in the London Borough of Sutton for 7 years that I truly feel like I have a stake in this city. I’m really starting to think about the decisions that are being made around planning and developing of local provisions such as getting my kids into a good school, the availability healthcare (the hospital both my kids were born at has been under threat of closer) and if we have an ample local supply of power and water and are we protected against floods? Not to mention how will we all get around the cities we live in.
As more and more of us live in urban settings, these cities are going to have to get better, get smarter and serve inhabitants better just to remain as viable places to live and work. Some cities will do this better than others which will mean a shift of populations to those that get it right, away from those that don’t. Employers and especially talented individuals will move to places that serve them better. It’s not just about growth, but about cities working better. The competition between cities is more alive now than ever, and it will change faster than ever before.
I can see the problems in my own city of London, but also the opportunities. We have a huge number of talented and creative people in the UK. I hope for my kids we can improve things and set the bar high.
City of Dreams
These 6 short films highlight some of the challenges UK cities face in some of those areas that will decide whether we stay or go, including transport, energy, education and healthcare. With interviews from senior leaders in the public and private sector, alongside IBM technology and business specialists, each gives their insights into the opportunities that exist to transform the way our cities function.
More of these videos plus a 3D version of City of Dreams at ibm.com/uk/cities
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Ho Chi Minh City Credit: Andre Lettau
Ho Chi Minh City is engineered to accommodate about three million people, but its population now tops 7 million–and it seems like half of them are riding motorbikes at any given time of day. So chaotic traffic was the first fact of life that struck members of a team of six IBMers when they landed in the city on Feb. 20 to begin the process of helping local leaders put together a plan for upgrading the city’s infrastructure. “The two-wheeler traffic was the highest I’ve seen on the planet,” marvels one of the IBMers, Guruduth Banavar, the former head of IBM Research in India.
Banavar, who is now the chief technology officer for IBM’s Public Sector business unit, was part of the team that spent three weeks in Ho Chi Minh City as part of IBM’s Corporate Service Corps. program. We send small groups of top-talent employees to emerging markets to help improve economic development, government services, and the like. The group that worked in Ho Chi Minh City was the first to be made up of executives. It was also the first to help a city in an emerging market look at all of its challenges holistically and come up with a master plan for taking them on. As a result of the engagement, Ho Chi Minh City and IBM have now formed a Smarter Cities alliance.
The city has adopted a 10-year redevelopment plan and will work with IBM on seven pilot programs in areas ranging from transportation to food safety. IBM will also help the city set up academic programs to prepare young Vietnamese to launch careers in technology services. “We think they can leapfrog their peers in other cities in eight to 10 years,” says Banavar.
One of the top priorities is dealing with traffic, of course. In one of the the pilot projects, IBMers will re-use a software tool developed in 2007 for analyzing traffic patterns in Singapore. They’ll monitor downtown Ho Chi Minh City traffic and create a model for predicting when intersections will clog–so the city can change traffic signals or deploy traffic cops to re-direct traffic and avoid grid-lock.
The lessons IBM learns in Vietnam will help it refine its approach to Smarter City projects in developing nations. One of the challenges that the government of Ho Chi Minh City has to overcome is the fact that there’s little coordination between the city’s government bureaus. Yet the systems they oversee, from traffic to water to electricity to public safety, area all interrelated. One of the goals of the new city plan is to bridge between the departments with coordinated strategies and shared data. These insights will be useful in other emerging-market cities, as well. “We can help change the governance structure of cities,” says Banavar.
Cities generate the vast bulk of the world’s CO2 emissions, and they account for 60 percent of all water allocated for domestic human use. As urbanization levels increase, how do city leaders ensure continuing water and energy supplies – while also promoting environmental sustainability? If you ask me, a good place to start is by making sure local utilities, government agencies, businesses and citizens alike are looking at the same information when making decisions about collective and individual energy use.
Fifteen years ago Peterborough was made one of four UK Environment Cities by The Department of the Environment and is set to become one of a cluster of IBM “Smarter Cities” being developed around the world. Peterborough’s growth targets to transform the city are ambitious and connecting the city systems is central to increasing quality of life for the proposed extra 20,000 jobs, 25,000 homes and 40,000 people that will be in the city by 2021 compared to 2001.
A new collaboration between the Peterborough City Council, Opportunity Peterobrough, Royal Haskoning, Green Ventures and IBM will help the city visualize energy, water, transport and waste systems to produce a real-time, integrated view of the city’s environmental performance. And citizens will be able to log on to the web portal to make more ecologically-minded decisions about their resource usage.
Graphic courtesy of Johnson Controls, who is working with IBM on smarter buildings
Following is a guest post from Florence Hudson, an energy and environment strategy executive from IBM:
Buildings have always been much more than roofs over our heads. Over the last century, as towers of steel reached higher into the sky and homes sprawled farther and farther into the surrounding landscape, our buildings not only housed burgeoning urban populations and growing economies – they also served as symbols of modernity and progress. Unfortunately, today’s offices, factories, stores and homes are also symbols of something else – waste and pollution.
Today, at the big IBM Pulse conference, we made some announcements that highlight the focus we’ve been putting lately on one of the biggest pieces in building a smarter planet – the building sector. Why? Consider some of the following:
- * The building sector is responsible for more electricity consumption than any other sector, 42%, and 15% of all Green House Gas (GHG) Emissions.
- * In the U.S., buildings represent 72% of all energy usage and 39% of Green House Gas (GHG) Emissions (pdf). Yet, up to 50% of that electricity is wasted.
- * In New York City, buildings account for 80% of NYC’s Carbon Emissions.
- * By 2025, buildings will be the single largest energy consumers and emitters of greenhouse gas on our planet.
The HVAC system, the lights, the water, the elevators, the power and cooling for technology, the heating and cooling for people: all contribute to making buildings a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions—and a leading energy user. Lights blaze and air conditioners hum in empty offices at night, and lawn sprinklers turn on even during a rainstorm. Commercial buildings lose as much as 50% of the water that flows into them.
A vision for smarter buildings
We can think about buildings differently – seeing homes not just as living spaces, but as living systems; seeing offices not just as static environments, but as dynamic ecosystems of people and intelligence. We touched on the concept of a building operating like a living organism in a recent blog post about five innovations we see affecting cities in the next five years.
In a smarter building, systems are not managed separately – they interoperate. Thousands of sensors can monitor everything from motion and temperature to humidity, precipitation, occupancy and light. The building doesn’t just coexist with nature – it harnesses it. Smart buildings can reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions by 10% to 50% or more and save 20% to 50% in water usage.
The agenda for smarter, sustainable buildings is a transformational agenda about creating and managing a new future for energy interaction and optimization that will serve as a model for both new and retrofit construction in the commercial and public sectors.
Instrumented, Interconnected, Intelligent
Putting the vision into tangible terms, I’ve put what we see as some of the major elements of Smarter Buildings into the context of the three “I’s” we often cite:
Instrumented
- * Smart Meters (electricity, water, gas)
- * Building management systems & building sensors (lighting, fire, environment, CO2)
- * Public safety and surveillance systems
- * IP-enabled devices – servers, PCs, actuators, control devices
Interconnected
- * Environments (fiber, wireless, public spaces, offices)
- * Sensors, sensor platforms & concentrators
- * Meters & building management systems
- * Systems (cost, space-use, portfolio management, facilities management)
Intelligent
- * “Enterprise-view” visibility of the building/campus/enterprise/city operations
- * Real-time analytics of sensor & meter data
- * Behavioral modeling of physical, natural & people systems
- * Visualization for user awareness & action
Not a future vision
It is important to note that this isn’t a futuristic vision. This is already happening today. For example, the St. Regis Hotel in Shanghai is the only 5-star hotel which is an Intelligent Building in the Shanghai region in China. We worked together with the St. Regis to integrate 12 sub-systems to create one intelligent building, with a ratio of energy costs to revenue below 5% compared to 8% for other five-star hotels in the Shanghai region – a 40% improvement.
