Senseable Rio
I.B.M. Takes ‘Smarter Cities’ Concept to Rio de Janeiro
“Smart is all about information. Once you have the information and understand it and know what to do with it, you are halfway to smart.” - Guru Banavar, an I.B.M. executive
(via NYTimes.com)
An operating system for cities: How IBM plans to make your city smarter | VentureBeat
Cutting emergency response times in Rio de Janeiro by 30 percent? Reducing pollution in San Francisco’s Bay Area? Eliminating traffic congestion in Lyon, France?
Those are all things you can do … if you make your city smarter.
IBM calls it Intelligent Operations Center (IOC), and in the past three years has led over 2,000 projects to “monitor, measure, and manage city services such as water systems, public safety, transportation, hospitals, electricity grids, and buildings.” Just this past week, the company announced new projects in South Bend, Indiana, Davao, Philippines, and Lyon, France.
In each of them, the company will be working to add sensors to everyday infrastructure, install software to integrate and manage the massive inflow of data, and provide city officials with the information and intelligence they need to run their cities better. Hopefully, the result will be better, more livable, and more sustainable urban environments.
VentureBeat spoke to Chris O’Connor, IBM’s vice president in charge of engineering and smart city products, to find out what makes IOC tick. And to learn what might be the future of smart cities … an operating system for reality.
“What would make commerce smarter via social media in Beirut? Berlin? Bogota? Buenos Aires? Chicago? Glasgow? Tell us what it means for you in your Social Media Week city: Los Angeles, Milan, Moscow, Rio, Sao Paulo or Vancouver.”
Social Commerce Scan Question 2 | Global/Local:
Join the Scan for Social Media Week, happening across cities around the world
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.
“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”).
