IBM Smarter Cities Initiative Helps Cities Manage Infrastructure Through Analytics

LAS VEGAS -- At its Pulse 2011 conference here, IBM is slated to announce that it is working with cities around the world to help them gain new efficiencies by visualizing and analyzing their physical and digital assets in real time.

Indeed, as part of its Smarter Cities initiative, IBM is announcing smarter cities projects in Cape Fear, N.C; Henderson, Nev.; Waterloo, Ontario; the Emirate of Abu Dhabi; and new results from an IBM First-of-a-Kind Research project in Washington, D.C.

Increasingly, cities are leveraging the power of location to bring efficiency to their operations and improve the customer experience, IBM officials said. They are using IBM software to get both a bird's eye view of their city infrastructures -- roads, buildings and waterways -- as well as insight into their operations underground or on the street -- the pipes, wires, streetlights, electrical meters, storm drains and other assets that make up a city's infrastructure. Some cities are using embedded sensors to detect faulty pipes or broken streetlights to automatically generate a work order for maintenance staffs.

"Cities around the world are getting smarter everyday by monitoring and analyzing the data in their streets, pipes and buildings," said David Bartlett, vice president of Industry Solutions at IBM, in a statement. "We see that these real-time analytical technologies are driving a new level of intelligence that helps cities -- big or small, new or old -- to gain more efficient, sustainable operations."