Let's build a smarter planet, city by city.
Tab navigation
- Why cities?
- Building smarter cities- selected tab,
- Berlin 2009
- New York City 2009
A smarter approach
All the ways in which the world works — from transportation, to energy, to healthcare, to commerce, to education, to security, to food and water and beyond — come together in our cities. This means that cities — more than states, provinces or even nations — are the platform on which to make 21st century life more productive, more efficient and more vibrant.
The good news is that today we have the potential to infuse greater intelligence into the way our cities work. We are seeing smarter traffic in Singapore, Stockholm and Brisbane… smart grids in Houston and Malta…smart buildings in Shanghai and Boulder… smart public safety in New York and Chicago… a smart bay in Galway… smart healthcare in Paris… and smart food tracking in Norway.
We now possess new tools and new models that can make cities more productive, more vibrant and more responsive. IBM is working with the world’s most progressive city leaders to infuse intelligence into the way our cities work. Interconnected and instrumented smart technologies offer a real-time integrated view of complex city systems, enabling administrators to monitor operations, improve performance and respond to the needs of their jurisdictions each day.
Yet, if we’re really going to drive meaningful change, we need to get a lot smarter about how we think about the city ecosystem. After all, cities are complex systems of complex systems, and multiple players have a stake. The only way to really improve the way cities and their systems work is by being far more collaborative across business, government, industry, academia and civil society.
We can work together. And we must. Below is a look at the various systems that make up our cities — and some of the ways we're partnering to make these better.
Smarter cities topics
Education
An education system that is instrumented and interconnected allows stakeholders to gain a real time view into what is working well and what is not. Successes can be quickly shared and duplicated. Curriculum can be enhanced with more powerful, interactive content. Institutions can expand their reach with online learning.
Healthcare
Using tools like electronic medical records, mobile computing devices and health support networks, healthcare can become more connected, universal and smarter. This means access for more patients to better medical resources and overall more personalized care.
Public safety
City leaders are using advanced computing capabilities to make our public safety systems smarter, more predictive and proactive. Madrid, for example, has integrated all of its emergency units into one central system for a faster, more cohesive response.
Transportation
Imagine a roadway that can help to regulate the flow of traffic, reduce congestion and cut pollution. Cities like Stockholm, Brisbane, London and Singapore are already developing smarter transportation systems.
Water & Energy
Energy and water flow through everything in our cities. With advances in technology, we can now monitor, measure and analyze water ecosystems and energy networks. This allows us to help protect and preserve clean water, while giving consumers greater control over their power usage.
Government Services
Just as private enterprises have rediscovered their mission and business model by returning to a focus on customers, governments around the world are finding success in reorienting their structures, information technology and policies around the citizens they serve.
