Building a Smarter City | WPN World People News

The steady influx of the world’s population into urban areas is encouraging city planners to invest in smart technologies that can improve both the efficiency and effectiveness of urban systems—a move that results in the saving of money, time and, in some cases, lives.

For the first time, more people live in cities than rural areas globally, and in the next two decades the urban population will grow to 5 billion people, from 3.5 billion today, according to Pike Research. Without investing in so-called smart technologies, cities will become strained by this stream of new residents: Utilities, transportation, buildings and government systems, especially in older, established cities, may be ill-equipped to cope with their rapidly expanding populations.

It is then not surprising that urban areas are expected to invest heavily, with projected expenditures of more than $16 billion a year by 2020 for a total of $108 billion between 2010 and 2020, Pike Research said. For its part, IDC estimates the smarter cities IT market opportunity will be worth $34 billion this year, increasing more than 18 percent per year to $57 billion by 2014.

Urban planners, real estate developers, utility companies, infrastructure providers, telecommunications firms, and IT developers and service providers are working together to build the cities of tomorrow, today. Through their combined efforts, both newer cities in burgeoning geographies without extensive infrastructures and older cities in Western regions that have long-established, legacy infrastructures in place are using modern technologies and know-how to improve quality of life, environmental impact, economic development and services within city limits.

“While there are many innovative pilot projects and small-scale developments that are looking at the smart city from a holistic perspective, there are no examples yet of a smart city that supports hundreds of thousands, never mind millions, of people,” according to Pike Research. “The smart city offers a coherent vision for bringing together innovative solutions that address the issues facing the modern city, but there are many challenges still to be faced. If the smart city is to truly become a blueprint for urban development, then a number of technical, financial and political hurdles will need to be met.”

By investing in smart technologies, cities also reap financial benefits and improved efficiencies, according to IBM, a partner in many urban centers’ adoption of these solutions.

“Investments in making a city’s core systems smarter will create cost savings and increased efficiencies while positioning it for long-term economic growth. Cities can begin building for this growth immediately. They can improve their current service delivery capabilities (as well as lay the foundation for new and expanded services) by making their core systems—transport, public safety, government services, education and health—smarter,” according to IBM Global Business Services. “This can be achieved through the application of advanced information technology, analytics and systems thinking to improve how a city works and how it stimulates a thriving, knowledge-driven economy.”

IBM is working, for example, with the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority of Wilmington, N.C., which is using IBM’s location-based intelligence to improve its water and sewage service for the company’s 67,000 customers. With its new IBM smarter water system and Esri GIS, Cape Fear officials can map almost 1,500 miles of main lines and 143 pump stations to see real-time information about any problems on the county’s water and sewer lines. Managers and teams can view, prioritize and act upon problems, using automatically generated work orders when necessary.

"Having geographic intelligence allows us to not only have a real-time view of our entire operation to optimize our teams and improve the efficiency of our work but also to drill into the significant details on history of that equipment, and the relationship to the overall community," said Nancy Gallinaro, chief operating officer at the utility. "This is especially critical at a time when we are faced with aging infrastructure and the challenges associated with a struggling economy."

In addition, the utility added a paperless system to update employees’ work. Using IBM’s Maximo software from their trucks’ computers and IBM software at pump stations, run-time meter reading collection was reduced to 30 minutes from four days.

Hoping to save lives as well as money, Rio de Janeiro partnered with IBM to build a “Single City Operations Center,” designed to help the growing and sprawling Brazilian city predict—and move people away from—the mudslides that killed hundreds and left thousands homeless in 2010.

At the new Rio Operations Center in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the incident commander's view provides a summary of everything happening around the city on a video wall.

The center gives operators a view of everything happening around the bustling city, which is preparing to host the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.

Source : Smarter Technology