Ginni Rometty Discusses How to Build a Smarter City (by IBMSocialMedia)
Ginni Rometty, Senior Vice President and Group Executive, Sales, Marketing and Strategy, IBM, speaks about how to build a smarter city at IBM SmarterCities Rio
Rio de Janeiro 2011
The future of our planet depends on our cities. By 2050, that’s where seventy percent of the Earth’s population will be living—growing from 3.3 billion people today to a breathtaking 6.4 billion. This wave of urbanization presents enormous challenges and opportunities to all of us—but especially to city leaders, and especially now as broad consensus for change emerges, driven by economic necessity and environmental concern.
The good news is that we now have the capability—both technological and political—to transform our cities for greater sustainability, growth and social progress. We now possess new tools and models to make cities more productive, more efficient, more vibrant and more responsive—in a word, smarter.
Hosted by IBM Chairman, President and CEO Samuel J. Palmisano, this leadership forum will bring together senior government and business leaders from Latin America’s most progressive cities to examine how we can spur economic development, modernize infrastructures and transform our cities to create a new urban model.
At our SmarterCities forum, we will convene experts from around the world to discuss the opportunities and challenges associated with urbaniz
ation and globalization. We will explore new approaches to regional partnership, identify roadblocks, evaluate frameworks for investment and review the tools that are helping our cities meet 21st century realities.
In Rio, Making Cities Smarter | Reuters
The numbers surrounding urbanization worldwide are staggering. In 2008, the number of people living in cities, for the first time in civilization, surpassed the number of people living in rural settings. Although urbanization is happening on every continent, the story could not be more dramatic in China, where urban migration will add 350 million people - more than the entire U.S. population - to cities by 2025. This will result not only in a swelling of the built environment, which will grow by 26 percent over the next ten years. It will also create unprecedented levels of demand for city services on a scale that most city governments have never experienced before, especially in the developing world. This realization is driving city leaders and technology innovators to launch an effort to leverage information and communications technology (ICT) systems to make it easier for cities to deliver services and foster innovation. Pike Research documented these efforts in our recent report, Smart Cities. Next week, worldwide experts on smart cities will descend upon Rio de Janeiro for IBM’s SmarterCities forum to examine IBM’s work on implementing ICT technologies to improve Rio’s urban infrastructure. IBM and the Rio de Janeiro city government have been working hard on the Rio Operations Center to manage its burgeoning investments in infrastructure and prevent the urban disasters that have plagued the city in the past. The Operations Center emerged largely in response to pervasive mudslides in Rio in 2010, which claimed the lives of more than 200 Cariocas. In an effort to avoid such disasters in the future, Rio is first investing in smart city infrastructure that tracks weather patterns and identifies likely vulnerabilities. In the long term, however, the Operations Center will be used to monitor a broader range of city services. And as attention turns to Brazil in anticipation of the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics, Brazil is particularly keen on demonstrating its ability to become a 21st-century nation.
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How Data is Making Rio de Janeiro a Smarter City - TNW Latin America
Do you plan to attend 2014 FIFA World Cup or 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro? If so, the city is already getting ready to welcome you. Here is how Rio is using technology and data management to get smarter.
Manage information to avoid tragedies
In April 2010, the State of Rio de Janeiro was hit by a natural disaster, when floods and mudslides killed over 200 people and made 15,000 homeless. Worse, Rio de Janeiro’s Mayor admitted that Rio’s preparedness was “less than zero”. To avoid similar tragedies, the city had until the next rainy season to prepare. This led to the creation of Rio Operations Center in partnership with IBM. It opened its doors on December 31st 2010, only a few months after the catastrophe.
Rio Operations Center, the city’s control room
Although its initial focus was floods, the scope of Rio Operations Center expanded considerably. Beyond managing all emergency response situations, it’s also the city’s information management center. It monitors transportation, water, weather and energy 24/7, 365 days a year.
The Center is part of the Smarter Cities initiative that IBM has been promoting since 2007. The group, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in June, has launched similar projects in cities such as New York City or Gauteng in South Africa. However, Rio is its most ambitious initiative to date, as part of the major transformations the city is going through ahead of the World Cup and Olympics.
Yesterday Rio de Janeiro’s city government launched an international competition to design the masterplan for the 2016 Olympics – with the winners announcement scheduled on July 13. We checked out some Olympic masterplans of yore, over here.
Rio de Janeiro’s Transit Solution: Cable Cars Over the Favelas Source:...
Rio de Janeiro’s Transit Solution: Cable Cars Over the Favelas
Source: Wired
The slums of Rio de Janeiro—the infamous favelas—pile onto and up and over the city’s iconic steep hillsides. Simply getting from point A to point B requires a sub-alphabet of zigzaggery up stairs, over…
“Located in Cidade Nova, the Rio Operations Center will integrate and interconnect information from multiple government departments and public agencies in the municipality to improve city safety and responsiveness to various types of incidents, such as flash floods and landslides.
The agreement also requires IBM to develop a high-resolution weather forecasting and hydrological modeling system (PMAR) for Rio de Janeiro. The PMAR will be helpful in predicting heavy rains up to 48 hours in advance.
The Rio de Janeiro operation center is a major project for IBM’s ninth Research Lab — recently opened in Brazil.”
With the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics on the horizon, authorities are engaging in two simultaneous battles to improve life in the favelas: implementing “pioneering” pacification schemes in the slums and splashing out billions of dollars remodelling the favelas as part of an urbanisation initiative called Morar Carioca (roughly “Rio Living”).
