March 2010
66 posts
The Smarter Cities Scan on A Smartphone
Use this QR Code to open the mobile version of the Smarter Cities Scan on your device.
A Screenr Overview of the Smarter Planet |Tumblr Site
Emergent Urbanism, or "Bottom Up Planning" - City of Sound →
jldevicente.tumblr.com
The city of Newcastle, NSW is the largest coal port in the world. Yet as the harbour has essentially become a giant open mouth belching coal to China, and people and other business have drifted to the suburbs (an over-simplification, but …), the historic core of the city has hollowed out, leaving numerous vacant buildings. Heading into the heart of all this, the Renew Newcastle project enabled small businesses, artists, entrepreneurs and various creatives to find a temporary home in these largely unoccupied city centre spaces. By liaising with the building owners, the project found a way of offering super-short-term leases at peppercorn rents in all kinds of pretty vacant spaces. They overlaid a free wi-fi network, enabling basic connectivity, and offered a few other basic amenities. The smart trick of the rolling 30-day lease gave start-ups a contract they could afford to get into, and landlords a secure way of getting them out of it should a better offer arise. Simple.
The project has been achieved without any meaningful funding at all (though funding came later - see comment from Marcus below). As a result, the almost derelict city centre is being used again, and the spaces are rapidly being reconfigured, becoming increasingly active, safe, productive. Emergent Urbanism Bottom-up implies a more sophisticated engagement with citizens, and from citizens. Genuine engagement in urban development is beyond manipulating dynamic viewsheds, browsing local census data, and poring over a developer’s financial projections. It means opening up the question of what the city is for to its citizens. It means putting many of the tools for design into the hands of citizens, to construct their own everyday city.
Decorate the building exterior with Solar cells
The Global warming is gearning up day-by-day, the summer days are not just hot, but they indeed very hot, sweaty and one would like to just to miss it.
In order to make life better in the current situation, was thinking of covering the building exterior with solar cells, for generating power. This would help us in multiple ways.
- Building can generate power from renewable source and hence dependency on non-renewable source is reduced.
- Since most of the heat energy will be absorbed by the solar cells, the building interior should be relatively insulated from the outside heat and will be require less amount air-conditioning.
- Global warning is bound to increase the temparature and so will be the power generation from solar cells.
- No need to paint the building exteriors, as they will be coved with solar cells. Most of the paints contain harmful chemical, with directly or indirectly affects all life and these will be avoided.
- …
Well there is no end to this list. Let start exploring, implementing and living in greener ways.
Am currently working from the city Kolkata, India.
#gdchallenge,Yeshwant Jhabak
Ideas for a smarter planet
Hello There, Well IBM has always been credited with the history of starting some thing big and new which later on is readily accepted by the society as a part and parcel of the society. Therefore i have couple of ideas to start with:
1. I think IBM should start with the idea of promoting all its employess to come to office using their bicycles for 1 day (may be once every month) so that it creates a sense of healthy living in their minds and in turn saves fuel as well. This should be done only by employees who’s home and office distance fall in the periphery of 5 km. And to credit those employess they should be extended with some benefits so that this activity is given its due deligence and is followed with sincerity.
2. Like the NSR concept there should be another autonomous body be created called SCP (Smarter City People) and the people who get themselves registered in this can have some priviliged rights with them like extra discounts on buying general grocery items and not having to stand in the queues while submissions of electricity bills etc….. Now the main idea to have a forum like this (SCP) is that it will have a common pool of people who have the common interest in making the city pollution free and in turn making the city clean and green, by pooling their vehicles with other registered SCP’s so that when they pool their vehicles with the stranger there is one thing common to both of them and that is they both are SCP,s and this will in turn create a sense of security among the other members. And to keep this as an ongoing activity there should be renewal of membership attached to it so that the members details are captured and updated annually, making them eligible for the other benefits going around their city.
3.Water reservation : There should be a separate waste drainage for the solid waste and there should be a separate waste drain for the kitchen waste so that some of the water can be used for some other purposes for eg cleaning of outer periphery area of the house. Thanks & Regards, Kritika Sethi Associate id: (02962G)
posted by Kritika Sethi (02962G), #gdchallenge, India
“Being human is itself difficult, and therefore all kinds of settlements (except dream cities) have problems. Big cities have difficulties in abundance, because they have people in abundance. But vital cities are not helpless to combat even the most difficult problems.”
—Jane Jacobs, american sociologist (1916-2006) (via publicdesignfestival)
IBM - The Smarter City http://bit.ly/diAO5I
Evernote shared notebook: The City As a Platform, SXSW Panel →
evernote.com
I love Evernote, and use it on my laptop and blackberry. But I never realized the utility of sharing a note publically, such as this example from the SXSW panel that my IBM colleagues and others participated in. What an amazing way to share knowledge.
SXSW Tackles “City as Platform”
There’s a growing (renewed?) interest in the Internet of Things around the benefits for a more instrumented and connected city. IBM organized a session at SXSW in Austin that took place this morning titled, “City as Platform.” The objectives of the session was to discuss the role of information architects, the interface of systems with the built world, the steps needed to transform the thinking of planners and builders toward viewing the city as a platform, and the role of citizens in the design.
Participants include an impressive array of technologists, city advocates, and planners/designers. The session is certainly an important one for wider advocacy of this “system of systems” thinking. The makeup of the panel and the objectives of the session are fully outlined on this Blog post from the Smarter Planet blog, with promises for a recap post and podcast to follow.
(via Spatial Sustain)
SXSW Interactive 2010: John Tolva Talks Smarter Cities
Listen to this podcast (16:25, MP3) we recorded recently at SXSW Interactive in Austin to hear John explain smarter cities in more and fascinating detail, and also to discuss his experience in the IBM Corporate Service Corps, IBM’s equivalent of the Peace Corps.
Walkable neighborhoods a buffer to foreclosures →
worldchanging.com
A forward thinking article from Worldchanging.com:
Looking at data from more than 40,000 mortgages throughout Chicago, San Francisco and Jacksonville, Fla., the researchers behind the Location Efficiency and Mortgage Default report found that the rate of mortgage foreclosure actually decreased in neighborhoods that were more compact, walkable and connected to public transportation (after accounting for important factors like income). According to a recent NRDC release:
“The effect of location efficiency is clear when comparing foreclosure probabilities for two homebuyers with exactly the same profile in terms of credit score, debt-to-income ratio, and loan-to-value ratio in differing neighborhoods. The research shows that the buyer in the more location efficient area will be less likely to default. (For a dollar and cents example, check this blog post.)”
Able to be less reliant on their cars, people living in walkable, connected neighborhoods had the flexibility to save money on transportation — a household expense that can be more than 17 percent of American homeowners’ total costs.
To create stability in the real estate sector, the link between transportation costs and foreclosure rates needs to be addressed, say the experts at the NRDC.
The report strongly focused on ‘location efficiency’ as a way to create this stability. Location efficiency is a phrase that describes how easy it is to live in your neighborhood without a car. If it’s easy for you to walk to work, places of interest, grocery stores or the bus stop, then your house is highly location efficient. NRDC researchers say that understanding this concept will be key to predicting mortgage performance and could be a helpful new tool for addressing the continuing mortgage default problem.
Some people get why compact, walkable cities make sense in an instant; others need some convincing. That’s why quality research like this, that backs up big picture thinking on bright green cities, is important. Research like this helps people stand up and say no to proposals for more roads and parking lots, and helps others realize that spending more money to live in the city center equals money well spent. Now to get policy that reflects this and politicians who support it. But that will take political will.
RT @smarterplanet: If you care about smarter cities, follow the #cityisaplatform hashtag. #sxsw panel with @immerito @benberkowitz @dustinhaisler @jmasengarb →
twitter.com
sjsg:
RT @smarterplanet: If you care about smarter cities, follow the #cityisaplatform hashtag. #sxsw panel with @immerito @benberkowitz @dustinhaisler @jmasengarb
Great opportunity to Help the world in Climate Change
I was reading an article last Monday about building a Smarter Planet which was address by Samuel J. Palmisano on January 12, 2010.
As an human being we all are responsible fro Climate Change. After reading the article I got to know how our (IBM) technology can help our planet to utilize the existing resources in a better way (in GDF we have learnt how to eliminate Waste in a business process likewise we can do the same thing to eliminate the waste to build a smarter planet).
Mercury is rising we need to something about it.As we all know about Copenhagen Climate Change Summit, many countries participated in this Summit to address the climate change issues. Many countries are still finding it difficult to handle the climate change.
I think we have got a great opportunity to help these countries in building a Smarter Planet. We can present our idea to all the government bodies; we can help all indivisible countries with our ideas, to build a smarter Planet. Help them to handle the climate change. We can accomplish our idea of building a smarter planet by collaborating with the Government, Private or public companies.
I am not sure if this has been suggested by someone else before me, but as an IBMer I wanted to present my idea or suggestion to save our Mother Earth.
Manoj Kumar S.S India
Streets
We often notice that street lights are not turned OFF or ON at proper times. Either it will be too dark and no light or the lights will be still ON during the day wasting so much of electricity. If there was a sensor which would detect the brightness outside and make sure the lights are turned ON or OFF as per the requirements it would save lot of electricity and make effective utilization of street lights.
“Royal Haskoning and Green Ventures today announced a new collaboration which aims to transform Peterborough into the leading sustainable city in the UK. The collaboration has outlined plans to launch a Sustainable City Visualisation project, which will initially focus on building a new online platform to monitor and analyze data on Peterborough’s energy, water, transport and waste systems. This data will be used to produce a real-time, integrated view of the city’s environmental performance. Residents and city officials will be able to log on to the web portal and easily access the necessary information to make more informed decisions about resource usage. For example, the city will be able to make suggestions to improve home water and energy usage, while being able to work more effectively with the utilities to plan the long term energy and water infrastructure that is needed for a sustainable future.”
—Peterborough Launches Smarter City Project to Transform City Systems and Drive Economic Growth - United States
Play
“People are the actuators (in a city)”
—Assaf Biderman, MIT SENSEable City Lab /via @smarterplanet (via spime)
Smart Underground Cabling
One of the initial step to make smarter city is managing their electrical, optical and other wired cabling.
When we say, we will built zero external wire cable city then it is very important to think, where we will give home to these cables?
I have seen now a days our traditional sewage lines has became new home for these cables but does really we are achieving the our objective of smarter city.
I believe no, even we can achieve zero external cabling but again we are creating other few big issues like -
-Very common Sewage Overflow.
-Sewage water-life interruption.
-Increasing chances of electric short-circuit.
One very simple but effective solution-
I have a very simple solution, while designing city sewage system we should take care of these cables as well.
While creating sewage lines why not create one more line along with for cabling this will solves above problems and have few more advantage like -
-When we need to expand our cable lines no need to interrupt sewage lines and vice versa.
-And most important thing we can deliver clean city.
Bangalore, India
#gdchallenge
Smart City: Wikipedia Definition
Smart Cities can be identified (and ranked) along six main axes or dimensions [2]. These axes are: a smart economy; smart mobility; a smart environment; smart people; smart living; and, finally, smart governance. These six axes connect with traditional regional and neoclassical theories of urban growth and development. In particular, the axes are based - respectively - on theories of regional competitiveness, transport and ICT economics, natural resources, human and social capital, quality of life, and participation of citizens in the governance of cities.
A city can be defined as ‘smart’ when investments in human and social capital and traditional (transport) and modern (ICT) communication infrastructure fuel sustainable economic development and a high quality of life, with a wise management of natural resources, through participatory governance.
FASHION DELIVERS is coordinating efforts to send new products to our neighbors in Haiti who have been devastated by what very well may be the worst natural disaster to have ever hit the western hemisphere. It has been reported that hundreds of thousands of people may have lost their lives and hundreds of thousands more have been left homeless and without life’s most basic necessities.
It’s easy to donate product to Fashion Delivers! Just download our simple product donation form and fax it back to us! 1.
B) Call us at (212) 629-6700
“The data exists to give commuters and transportation agencies a better way to manage traffic but today it’s not connected. IBM has the ability correlate all of this information to better predict demand, optimize capacity help improve traveler and highway safety as well as reduce our impact on the environment.”
—Above quote by Gerry Mooney, General Manager, Public Sector, IBM (via IBM Scientists Use Analytics to Break Traffic Gridlock With Personalized Trip Information)
Biological paths to energy self-reliance
Two years ago, aroused by love for Mother Earth and by the news that begin to rage on tv channels and newspapers about the global warming, I decided to gather information about alternative energies.I went to my district’s public library and, between several books about solar and wind power energy, I run into the treatise of Russel E. Anderson, Biological paths to energy self-reliance : a guide to biological solar energy conversion.
This book, written during the 70’s, already predicted in advance what will happen to our planet in few decades from that time.And he already had a possible solution in mind, that made enquires of factors like development, geographycal location, economics, ecology, energy, photosynthesis, use of biomasses and algaes’ coltures, in order to produce electical energy, gas heating, natural fertilizers and fuel, enegy self-reliance homes and companies, just by the use of biomechanical and biotechnologies.Unfortunatly this solution started to be applied only now a days and not yet on a large scale.
One of the projects of Russell E. Anderson essentially consists in the possibility to create sustainable energy self-reliance environments.Let take as an example a farm-house: by a system of organical wastages composting derived by food, plants, human beings and animals and treated by an anaerobic digester (you can find more detailed informations at http://en.wikipedia.or/wiki/Anaerobic_digestion) which is fed by solar panels and situated underground, is possible to create natural fertilizers capable of raising the agriculture productivity (exploiting the gas water obtained by the composting mixed with the water of a small artificial lake where they will grow a particular type of algae.It will also be possible to breed fishes for human nourishment) and produce natural gas that will be used to produce electrical energy and gas heating for the farm house, and fuel to substain farm tools and machinery.
According to my recent studies attempted in International Cooperation and Development I believe that this kind of project will be important to reflect the 7th Millenium Development Goal (MDG) establish by United Nations and to be implemented by 2015.This Goal plans to:Ensure Environmental Sustainability
Target 1. Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs and reverse the loss of environmental resources
Indicators
- Proportion of land area covered by forest (FAO)
- Ratio of area protected to maintain biological diversity to surface area (UNEP-WCMC)
- Energy use (kg oil equivalent) per $1 GDP (PPP) (IEA, World Bank)
- Carbon dioxide emissions per capita (UNFCCC, UNSD) and consumption of ozone-depleting CFCs(ODP tons) (UNEP-Ozone Secretariat)
- Proportion of population using solid fuels (WHO)
Target 2. Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation
Indicators
- Proportion of population with sustainable access to an improved water source, urban and rural (UNICEF-WHO)
- Proportion of population with access to improved sanitation, urban and rural (UNICEF-WHO)
Target 3 Have achieved by 2020 a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers
Indicators
- Proportion of households with access to secure tenure (UN-HABITAT)
A further personal observation I’m still trying to confirm is: can this type of system help to d`efeat malaria?According to some people which I had opportunity to confront, and read documentation, I seem to understand that the mosquitoes which are carriers of malaria grow where water is noxious, open wide sewers for example.So I ask myself, could this areas be reclaimed and using the organical wastages to product energy?Can this be a way to defeat the sickness and to also give this zones energy self reliance?
Irene Sara Vassallo, Johannesburg, South Africa #gdchallenge
