Desert mountain club saving 10 million gallons of water with Analytics
Using Data to Keep Peace | The Atlantic
There is no proverbial silver bullet to creating a safer city, but analytics technology is assisting law-enforcement agencies all over the world to sort through information—part of the 2.5 quintillion bytes of data we create and consume every day—to get ahead of crime. Having access to all that information is an invaluable resource for law enforcement agencies, but it can also be pretty paralyzing. After all, only a fraction of the bits and bytes can actually be relevant, right? But how do you know, and, more importantly, how do you find and act on it?
Raising the IQ of School Buildings
Schools across the U.S. are discovering that bringing greater intelligence and connectedness into a building’s operations can go a long way toward creating more efficient, sustainable and profitable campuses.
Insights in Motion: Deep Analytics Shows How Cities Really Work | Smarter Planet Blog
Stand on a busy big-city street corner at lunch time and you will witness a chaotic scene. Thousands of people are walking every which way, getting on and off buses, descending to subways, riding in cars, and walking in and out of buildings. Where did all these people come from? And where are they going? Until now, such questions were unanswerable–mysteries of the city. But no more.
Today, thanks to deep analytics, we can for the first time understand the complexities of cities in motion.
RadioLab - Cities
Worthwhile program on urban intelligence:
“There’s no scientific metric for measuring a city’s personality. But step out on the sidewalk, and you can see and feel it. Two physicists explain one tidy mathematical formula that they believe holds the key to what drives a city. Yet math…
Featuring Joe Peach of This Big City blog and Tumblr.
Two new hires, a data scientist, and a practice leader on their challenges and motivations, succeeding at IBM, and the qualities future consultants will need.
Charleston Police Department Aims to Reduce Crime Using IBM Predictive Analytics
Sheltering A City With Data: The Rio de Janeiro Story (by IBM)
Rio de Janeiro, the most visited city in the southern hemisphere, will soon play host to both the World Cup and the Olympic Games. Unfortunately it is also the location of the biggest natural disaster in Brazil’s history. In 2010, Rio de Janeiro was devastated by severe floods and mudslides, which took hundreds of lives and left thousands homeless.
Out of the need for improved emergency management and better weather prediction, IBM helped the city integrate predictive analytics, real-time data, and weather modeling technology and establish a state-of-the-art operations center. At the heart of the center is PMAR, a high resolution weather prediction system powered by IBM’s Deep Thunder supercomputer. It lets the city predict rains and floods 48 hours in advance, allowing for better management of emergency services and potentially saving lives.
From there the Rio Operations Center grew, and now acts as a nervous system for the entire city: managing traffic congestion, keeping a close eye on crime response and prevention, predicting brownouts in the power grid, and coordinating large-scale events to ensure public safety.
Integrating over 30 agencies and services across the city, the Rio Operations Center empowers the government and its citizens to be prepared for whatever nature may throw their way. IBM is helping make cities smarter. Let’s build a smarter planet -
Last night, Mayor Bloomberg announced the winners of NYC BigApps 3.0, the third annual competition for software developers and members of the public to create web or mobile applications using official City data. A total of 11 winning applications were selected from a record 96 eligible applications that were submitted for this year’s contest. The NYC BigApps 3.0 winners are:
Best Overall Application
- Grand Prize: NYCFacets - seeks to streamline and simplify the process for accessing, understanding, and utilizing the tremendous amount of data available in City’s NYC Open Data site.
- Second Prize: Work+ - helps New Yorkers who traditionally work from home find nearby locations to work in their communities.
Popular Choice Award
- Grand Prize: New York Trip Builder - a travel site that helps users personalize a trip in just a few quick steps.
- Second Prize: Scene Near Me - provides alerts when users are near legendary New York City movie scenes.
Investor’s Choice Award
- The Funday Genie - an application designed to help users plan a free day in New York City.
Best Mobility App
- Embark NYC - an application designed to make taking the subway simple.
Best Green App
- 596 Acres - a public education project aimed at making communities in Brooklyn aware of the land resources around them.
Best Education App
- Sage: Pre-K and Elementary Schools Search - a mobile application that enables parents to search by location for nearby NYC public Pre-K and elementary schools.
Best Health & Safety App
- TestFlip.com Personal Safety App (Lite) for NYC - a personal emergency web mobile application which helps alert the nearest Police Precinct, provides a custom emergency phone number by SMS or provides a pre-scripted voice message or a custom email by simply pressing one Emergency Button.
Best NYC Mashup
- Work+
Best Student Award
- ParkAlly - an application which simplifies the search for available parking spots and eliminates the inconveniences associated with parking in heavily populated areas.
City Talent Award
- Uhpartments - provides building maintenance reports for those users seeking apartments.
First launched in 2009 as part of the City’s ongoing efforts to increase transparency in government, as well as to improve the quality of life for New Yorkers and visitors, BigApps has grown each year and this year included more than 230 new datasets from more than 60 City agencies, commissions, and Business Improvement Districts, for a total of nearly 750 available data sets for developers.
Check out all the winning apps and read much more in the official press release. Congratulations to all who participated in this year’s competition!
via nycedc:
(via nycdigital)
IBM, Dolphins partner to improve fan experience - South Florida Business Journal
The Miami Dolphins have partnered with IBM to improve the fan experience by gaining insight into Sun Life Stadium operations.
Using the IBM (NYSE: IBM) Intelligent Operations Center for Smarter Cities, stadium officials can access real-time data ranging from weather alerts and security information to stadium traffic flow and fan concession preferences, a press release said.
