Explore TheSmarter City
Not a vision of tomorrow, but a vision of today. A collection of smart ideas from all over the world, all in one place.
Analyzing the future of cities
Just as you can look at a newspaper photograph and see both the image and the tiny individual dots that give it its shapes and shadings, city leaders look at their municipalities in terms of both the big picture and the individual citizens that comprise it.
The majority of us live in cities, and the percentage is growing. Municipal leaders who run the complex network of diverse people, expected services and aging infrastructure are on a constant search for more efficient ways to analyze data, anticipate problems and coordinate resources in their cities.
As centers of business, culture and life, cities are logical places to integrate many of the Smarter Planet principles and innovations in public safety, transportation, water, building, social services and agencies. A new kind of solution, the IBM Intelligent Operations Center for Smarter Cities, (also available for cloud), synchronizes and analyzes efforts among sectors and agencies as they happen, giving decision makers consolidated information that helps them anticipate—rather than just react to—problems. By using these tested approaches, cities can manage growth and development in a sustainable way that minimizes disruptions and helps increase prosperity for everyone.
In 1900, only 13% of the world's population lived in cities. By 2050, that number will have risen to 70%. We are adding the equivalent of seven New Yorks to the planet every year.
This unprecedented urbanization is both an emblem of our economic and societal progress—especially for the world's emerging nations—and a huge strain on the planet's infrastructure. It's a challenge felt urgently by mayors, heads of economic development, school administrators, police chiefs and other civic leaders.
The challenges these leaders face—educating the young, keeping citizens safe and healthy, attracting and facilitating commerce, and enabling the smooth flow of planes, trains, cars and pedestrians—are compounded by the global economic downturn.
Thankfully, help is at hand. Around the world, intelligence is being infused into the way our cities work.
Transport officials in Singapore, Brisbane and Stockholm are using smart systems to reduce both congestion and pollution. Public safety officials in major cities like New York are able not only to solve crimes and respond to emergencies, but to help prevent them. City managers in Albuquerque have achieved a 2,000% improvement in efficiency in sharing information across agencies, keeping citizens informed and providing critical municipal services, from residential and commercial development to water to public safety. A large hospital organization in Paris is implementing an integrated patient-care management solution to facilitate seamless communication across its business applications—enabling them to track every stage of a patient's stay in the hospital.
Italy, Malta and Texas are applying smart meters and instrumentation to make the power grids in their cities more stable, efficient and ready to integrate renewable energy sources and electric vehicles. A large US city built a transparent management system that helps identify and restructure low-performing schools and increase academic achievement for students. Smart water management in the Paraguay- Paraná River Basin of Brazil is helping to improve water quality for São Paulo's 17 million residents.
These solutions, and many more, are making a real impact today. But they are just the first step toward a true smart city.
For a glimpse of what that might look like, consider Masdar City, which is being built from scratch near Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates. Planners there are working with top scientists, engineers and innovators to create interconnected systems and manage them through an integrated city dashboard.
Masdar City's leaders want to be able to fine-tune their metropolis in real time—and thus shape what could be the world's first economically and environmentally sustainable city, with zero carbon emissions, as they go.
The lessons they learn—both technological and in terms of citywide collaborative management—can be spread around the globe.
If someone could have observed the Earth from space two centuries ago, he or she would have seen the light from just two concentrations of a million or more people—London and Beijing. Today, there are 450 such shining cities—and they are the economic, governmental, cultural and technological power plants of a global urban age. Our future depends on keeping them running and growing brightly.
Let's build a smarter planet, city by city. Join us and see what others are thinking at ibm.com/think/ca
Smarter Cities systems
Government
As governments infuse the basic systems of our planet with intelligence to stimulate economies and benefit citizens, we start to ask: Can the operations of government itself become smarter?
Public safety
Cities large and small are turning to advanced computing capabilities such as data analytics, visualization and sensor networks to enhance public safety systems.
Healthcare
Using tools like electronic medical records, wireless computing devices and health support networks, innovators are making our systems smarter and more affordable.
Energy
With smarter grids, utilities can manage the flow of power through their systems. And consumers can manage their appliances and use of energy at the household (or even automobile) level.
Traffic
Our rapidly urbanizing planet depends on getting people and things from here to there. Our cars keep getting smarter. So how about our roadways?
Education
A new school of thought: educate yourself on key trends in learning, advances in computing and the economic factors that are reshaping our educational systems.
Water
Sensor networks, smart metering and advanced computing and analytics are helping to ensure the flow of clean, plentiful water around the planet.
Rail
Imagine a rail system infused with enough intelligence to increase capacity and utilization and reduce congestion. Fortunately, we don't have to wait to begin seeing such impacts.
Buildings
If a building's systems interoperate, they can be managed centrally, even intelligently. With all their impact on the planet, it's time for buildings to get smart.
How it's done
Introducing "The Smarter City" series
The modern city is a system of systems. When collaboration is encouraged, progress results.
The Living City
Meeting increasing needs for education, health and social services as populations grow.
Powering the City
Implementing a smarter system for production, management and supply of energy and water.
City in Motion
Making use of new traffic and travel advances with fewer resources and a growing population.
Developing the City
Focusing on the office buildings we inhabit, working patterns and the nature of investment.
City of Dreams
Looking to the future of cities' economic and social development in the Decade of Smart.
Every minute during the next twenty years, 30 Indians will leave rural India for urban areas.
India will need some 500 new cities. If there were ever a time to focus on the smart growth of our urban areas, that time is now.
As populations grow at a fast clip, they are placing greater demands on the city infrastructures that deliver vital services such as transportation, healthcare, education and public safety. Adding to the strain are ever-changing public demands for better education, greener programs, accessible government, affordable housing and more options for senior citizens.
Replacing the actual city infrastructures is often unrealistic in terms of cost and time. However, with recent advances in technology, we can infuse our existing infrastructures with new intelligence. By this, we mean digitizing and connecting our systems, so they can sense, analyze and integrate data, and respond intelligently to the needs of their jurisdictions. In short, we can revitalize them so they can become smarter and more efficient.
Making cities more instrumented, interconnected and intelligent isn't only about overcoming the challenges they face. It also recognizes that cities provide us with some of the greatest opportunities for making the planet smarter, too.
Cities symbolize and centralize so many aspects of what will make for a smarter planet: smarter education, smarter healthcare, smarter water and energy use, smarter public safety, smarter transportation, and smarter government ... to name but a few.
A new report from the IBM Institute for Business Value, "A Vision of Smarter Cities," makes the case that cities must use new technologies to transform their systems to optimize the use of finite resources. As sustainability for cities and the planet becomes ever more important, the question isn't whether cities will do this; the question is: Which ones are doing it first? And who will do it best?
Innovative cities
Smarter transportation
Some cities start by transforming their transportation systems. Dublin, Singapore and Brisbane are working with IBM to develop smart systems ranging from predictive tools to smart cards to congestion charging in order to reduce traffic and pollution.
Smarter policing and emergency response
New York, Syracuse (PDF), Santa Barbara and St. Louis are using data analytics, wireless and video surveillance capabilities to strengthen crime fighting and the coordination of emergency response units.
Smarter power and water management
IBM is working with local government agencies, farmers and ranchers in the Paraguay-Paraná River basin, where São Paulo is located, to understand the factors that can help to safeguard the quality and availability of the water system.
Malta is building a smart grid that links the power and water systems, and will detect leakages, allow for variable pricing and provide more control to consumers. Ultimately, it will enable this island country to replace fossil fuels with sustainable energy sources.
Smarter governance
New Mexico's capital city, Albuquerque (PDF), is using a business intelligence solution to automate data sharing among its 7,000 employees in more than 20 departments, so every employee gets a single version of the truth. It has realized cost savings of almost 2,000%.
Three local UK councils have adopted a new IBM business model that could change the way local government is managed. Through Southwest One (PDF) Shared Services, IBM will manage the IT infrastructure, procurement, customer service and workforce development functions, allowing agencies to focus on delivering critical services to citizens. The model can expand to include up to 30 public sector agencies.