Building a smarter planet is IBM's point of view on how interconnected technologies are changing the way the world literally works. It is all about how the world now beckoning us is one of enormous change and promise. Smarter planet is also the foundation for IBM’s vision for smarter cities--a vision that demonstrates how cities can lead the way into a prosperous and sustainable future. We see cities as the brightest opportunity to begin working toward a smarter planet.
In spite of our optimism, today’s cities face a range of challenges and threats to their sustainability—challenges across their systems and core infrastructures such as transport, water, energy, government services, education and healthcare.
As a point of interest for the audience, let’s first take a moment to understand the meaning of a smart city from the members of the audience. What is your personal definition and/or perspective? Just what is a smart city?
(Note: use the input/comments collected from audience as insight and leverage to make points during the presentation.)
Thank you for your input.
From IBM’s perspective, we see a smarter city as an urban development that employs instrumentation, interconnection, and intelligence to provide awareness of and coordinated responsiveness to activities and events within the city. These capabilities enable the people and the local industry to benefit from a great place to live, work, and run a business... A city that is adaptive, collaborative, efficient, personalized, secure, supportive, and sustainable.
As we explore the meaning of a smarter city and how we become one, we must also understand that the aforementioned services and challenges must be addressed holistically… today’s presentation is intended to give you further insight and considerations for becoming a smarter city. Though first, let’s explore cities from an historical perspective.
First, what draws us to cities? A good quality of life for citizens? Access to economic and social activities? Better education and healthcare options for ourselves and for our families?
What draws us? What draws us the most is… OPPORTUNITY!
Essentially, cities offer individuals and businesses the ability to move things and people around through city transport systems and the opportunity to share ideas and information through their communication systems. Presumably, cities offer a quality of life for all. As cities grow in both numbers and population, they are taking their place on the world’s center stage--with more economic, political and technological power than ever before. Economically, they are becoming the hubs of a globally integrated, services-based society. Politically, they are in the midst of a realignment of power—with greater influence, but also greater responsibility.
This creates new challenges… Mass urbanization, technological empowerment, and new intelligence are changing the look of cities and challenging them with new threats that range across business, people, transportation, water, energy, and communication. As cities face substantial and interrelated challenges, it becomes clear that ‘business as usual’ is no longer a viable option. Cities MUST use their power to become ‘smarter’. With the current economic climate, I am sure your city is faced with acting now and pursing new opportunities to optimize and use your limited resources.
Cities are a microcosm of major challenges and opportunities facing the planet today. It is in cities where all man-made systems come together and interact with one another and the environment. As implied earlier, growing populations are causing cities to face significant sustainability challenges and threats to these infrastructures that deliver vital services. Adding to the strain of public demand for better education, greener programs, public safety, accessible government, affordable housing and more options for senior citizens and better quality of life for all.
Consider:
How much energy we waste—losses of electrical energy because grid systems are not smart
How gridlocked our cities are—congested roadways in the U.S. only result in 2.9 billion gallons of wasted gas annually
How inefficient our supply chains are—consumer product and retail industries lose about $40B annually, 3.5% of sales due to inefficiencies
How our planet’s water supply is drying up—global water usage has increased six-fold since the 1900’s, twice the rate of population growth
And of course, the crisis in our financial markets—this will have a long-term impact, undermining our confidence.
It is obvious, when you consider the trajectories of developments impacting our planet and our cities, we are going to have to run a lot smarter and more efficiently, especially as we seek to drive economic growth and sustainability.
Smarter cities focus on the economic health and welfare of citizens and businesses—providing needed services, creating an economically sound environment and improving the quality of life for all. To do this ‘smartly’, city leaders must cross a new threshold in their ability to manage pervasive information, analyze it to gain insight, predict risks and opportunities, and drive faster, smarter decisions and actions… they must, and will with a smarter performance management solution, gain a new kind of intelligence from their information, make better decisions, and optimize their assets and operations.
As a city leader, how will you lead the creation of opportunity in order to remain competitive on a global scale? The opportunity presented by smarter cities is the opportunity for any city to realize sustainable prosperity. How will you create the opportunity? How will you attract and facilitate commerce? How will you pursue needed and mandated changes? How will you confront a unique opportunity to help transform the way the world works and to ensure that your city is among those cities who will become smarter?
IBM conducted a Global CEO Study in 2008, where government leaders and private sector CEOs anticipated turbulent change in the near future. Indeed, less than a year later many of these leaders are now confronting a unique opportunity to transform the way they work and deliver services--perhaps they are finding a place on the global stage. In a smarter world, successful organizations across all industries, and specifically cities, will aim to utilize the potential of pervasive new technologies to meet demands of the public and address the challenges they face caused by over-stressed infrastructures. Of course, transformation must take place within tight financial constraints.
Change is complex, requiring particular skills that are in short supply. Looking ahead, it is clear that the need and movement for change will continue; having the capability to navigate it will be a key to a city’s success.
The time to act is now! City governments, more so than other levels of government, will increasingly serve as the crucibles where the success of failure of our planet is determined. Cities must prepare for change that will be revolutionary, rather than evolutionary, as they put in place next-generation systems that work in entirely new ways. To take the path to transformation and becoming a ‘smarter city,’ city leaders must lead their ‘team’ by integrating their own organizations, and work with other levels of government, from both the private and non-profit sectors. Why?
Tránsito inteligente. Los sistemas de tránsito inteligente están fortaleciendo las posiciones competitivas de las ciudades. IBM trabaja con Brisbane, Londres, Singapur y Estocolmo para implementar sistemas de tránsito más inteligentes. Estocolmo experimentó una reducción del tráfico del 20%, una reducción de las emisiones del 12% y un aumento de 40.000 usuarios diarios de la red de transporte público. De hecho, la gente de Estocolmo votó para que el sistema quedara instalado permanente, luego de la prueba piloto.
Orden público inteligente. IBM está ayudando a la ciudad de Chicago a combatir el delito digitalizando sus prácticas de orden público e implementando sistemas de vigilancia más inteligentes... Incluso probando un sistema que utiliza sensores de audio para dirigir las cámaras para ubicar disparos de armas, determinar el calibre de un arma disparada e identificar su ubicación exacta, mucho antes de que se llame al 911.
La atención de salud inteligente puede bajar el costo de las terapias hasta 90%, como lo demuestra ActiveCare Network con sus más de 2 millones de pacientes en 38 estados. ActiveCare monitorea la entrega correcta de sus inyecciones y vacunas.
IBM ayuda a ActiveCare Network a monitorear más de 12.000 clínicas y dar a más de 2 millones de pacientes la red de entrega correcta de inyecciones, vacunas y otros productos farmacéuticos.
ACN utiliza software IBM para bajar 90% el costo de la terapia y reducir 60% el tiempo y costo requerido para desarrollar aplicaciones clínicas y de pacientes.
Energía inteligente. IBM lidera 7 de las 11 implementaciones de medidores inteligentes globalmente, incorporando inteligencia a los servicios públicos para bajar los costos para los ciudadanos y equilibrar mejor la red.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory ayudó a los propietarios a reducir costos de energía hasta 10% convirtiendo los termostatos comunes en intercambiadores diarios de energía, asegurando el mejor costo para el cliente que el mejor equilibrio para la red.
Consideremos lo ineficientes que son nuestras cadenas de suministro.
Las industrias minorista y de productos de consumo pierden aproximadamente US$40 mil millones por año, o 3,5% de sus ventas, debido a ineficiencias en la cadena de suministro.
*Según AT. Kearney.
What this means is that the digital and physical infrastructures of the world are converging. Computational power is being put into things we wouldn't recognize as computers. Indeed, almost anything—any person, any object, any process or any service, for any organization, large or small—can become digitally aware and networked.
Replacing the actual city infrastructure is often unrealistic in terms of cost and time. However, with recent advances in technology, we can infuse our existing infrastructures with new intelligence. By this, we mean digitizing and connecting our systems, so they can sense, analyze and integrate data, and respond intelligently to the needs of their jurisdictions. In short, we can revitalize them so they can become smarter and more efficient.
Delivering change across the three dimensions of ‘smart’--instrumented, interconnected and intelligent--enable cities to set the agenda and think and act in new ways. Smarter cities are shifting their focus from ‘within’ to ‘between,’ pursing collaborative networking and technology innovation to protect and connect citizens, increase shared information awareness, and speed communications -- ultimately, elevating smart decision-making. Cities and their key stakeholders must work together to act in new ways through innovative approaches to solve their top priorities. You, as a city leader, may have the need to identify new approaches and solutions for your city’s driving motivations. For example, you may be focused on one of the following key areas:
Improving citizen and business services
Managing resources effectively and efficiently
Strengthening national security and public safety
Ensuring a sustainable environment
We would like to think that these, although simplistic in ‘vernacular’, can be powerful foundation elements for most successful and sustainable cities.
Smarter planet solutions require models to capture the physical environment, business & IT, and individuals and community. Since the real worlds are interconnected and interdependent, the modeled worlds are also going to be interconnected and interdependent. We would like to dive deeper into these areas.
Examples of models in each of the three worlds are as shown. The trend for the business and IT worlds is the increasing standardization and transparency, the trend for the physical worlds is the increasingly rich modeling and instrumentation, and the trend for the human worlds is higher fidelity capture with human assist.
The emerging opportunities include fusing multiple world models to extract insights, capturing and using dynamic intelligent interactions, and orchestrating these interdependent models, information, processes, decisions, and actions.
The key point is the increasing importance of the “modeled world” in order to ensure harmonious operation of the real world. Analyzing and managing these interconnected and interdependent models creates differentiating business value for clients and opportunities for IBM.
Spain is the world’s 3rd biggest producer of wind power, after United States and Germany. On particular windy days, wind power generation surpassed all other electricity sources combined – including nuclear power. Recently on Nov. 8th, 2009, wind power production reached its all-time maximum and account for 53% of the total demand of the entire Spain. Given large variation of wind power production, it is even more critical to integrate real-time visibility with the behavior models (weather – especially wind and the demand) to maximize the leverage of the wind power within the grid.
It is anticipated there will be exponential growth across the spectrum of wireless opportunities. In mobile internet, smart phone and entertainment, including content and data, growth is estimated at 10 to 30x, placing significant constraints on existing wireless infrastructure.
In the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) and Smarter Planet areas, substantial growth is anticipated at 4x in the next 5 years. M2M includes a broad variety of areas including: telemetrics and telemetry particularly in the automotive, utility and transportation areas, ATM, point of sale, and vending applications. For smarter planet, areas include smart grid, video surveillance, and mobile content delivery to vehicles.
For enterprise wireless, that is enterprise mobility and campus applications, the majority of traffic will happen in-building as a high-bandwidth follow on to WiFi. Femto and picocell technogies will cover this opportunity in very high volumes, driving down the infrastructure cost points.
Since better wireless algorithms (eg: MIMO and other signal processing) are required to increase spectral efficiency, 10X computational power increase is expected for future wireless standards. A cloud model for wireless access network will support such requirements more effectively through software radio, virtualization, use of hybrid system platforms and cloud principles.
3. Backhaul bits are expensive, and more value needs to be squeezed out of every backhaul bit. IP local breakout and services at wireless edge will allow superior quality of experience (QoE) for customers.
Definiciones: Backhaul (red de retorno): Conexión entre computadoras u otros equipos de telecomunicaciones encargados de hacer circular la información. Los backhaul conectan redes de datos, redes de telefonía celular y constituyen una estructura fundamental de las redes de comunicación. Un backhaul es usado para interconectar redes entre sí utilizando diferentes tipos de tecnologías alámbricas o inalámbricas.
Definiciones
In telecommunications, a femtocell is a small cellular base station, typically designed for use in a home or small business. It connects to the service provider’s network via broadband (such as DSL or cable); current designs typically support 2 to 4 active mobile phones in a residential setting, and 8 to 16 active mobile phones in enterprise settings. A femtocell allows service providers to extend service coverage indoors, especially where access would otherwise be limited or unavailable. Although much attention is focused on WCDMA, the concept is applicable to all standards, including GSM, CDMA2000, TD-SCDMA, WiMAX and LTE solutions
A picocell is a wireless communication system typically covering a small area, such as in-building (offices, shopping malls, train stations, etc.), or more recently in-aircraft. A picocell is analogous to a Wi-Fi access point.
What must cities do to become smarter? Important steps start with setting your city’s goals and developing a long-term strategy, select-high value projects that can be managed carefully to provide visible and valuable results. These fine steps: develop strategy, prioritize projects, integrate across systems, optimize services and operations, and discover new opportunities for growth, must be done using a collaborative approach.
To prepare your city for the journey to a smarter city consider the following pointers:
Assemble the team--no city is an island. Administrations – at the city level and elsewhere – are recognizing the importance of
“perpetual collaboration.” To deliver the goals a city has set, city administrations will need to work seamlessly across their
own organizational boundaries and partner effectively with other levels of government, as well as with the private and non-profit
sectors. Many issues that cities face will require significant collaboration among city, state and national levels of government. In
addition to formulating new policies themselves, cities must be able to articulate the challenges they face to influence policies
made elsewhere.
• Think revolution, not evolution: Rising to the challenges and threats to sustainability requires a city to be more than just focused or efficient; it will require the next generation of city to emerge – one based on smarter systems. These systems are interconnected – people and objects can interact in entirely new ways. These systems are instrumented – the exact condition of the system’s different parts can be measured. These systems are intelligent – cities can respond to changes quickly and accurately, and get better results by predicting and optimizing for future events.
• Target all, not just one: The interrelationships between the various systems mean that while cities obviously must prioritize, “solving one” is not a viable long-term option. The challenges and threats to sustainability come from all angles and require a holistic strategy that addresses all factors and feedback mechanisms.
Becoming “smart” is truly a journey, not an overnight transformation—it is a journey that requires extraordinary leadership. Superior leadership combined with a foundation built on a willingness to collaborate, support standards, and openness and innovation as the underpinnings of a city’s long-term strategy and road-map to success.
Cities have limited resources. To deliver on the range of ambitious goals, cities must take account of the interconnected challenges they face and the interrelated systems they influence. The first step requires a shift in thinking and a break from the past. This means that city administrations should develop an integrated city-planning framework, based on deciding where their internal expertise lies--in essence identifying a city’s core competencies – and bringing in outside expertise where necessary. This will rarely align to a city’s current allocation of tasks, meaning cities must look at which activities to shed, which to retain and potentially reorganize, which to partner for, and which new activities to expand into.