ARMONK, N.Y., July
20, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM's (NYSE: IBM)
Smarter Cities Challenge program (@CitiesChallenge) will be sending
teams of company experts to five municipalities through 2018 to
provide pro bono consultative advice on issues such as affordable
housing, economic development, immigration, and public safety.
The five recipients – Busan,
Korea; Palermo,
Italy; San Isidro, Argentina; San
Jose, USA; and Yamagata
City, Japan -- were selected from
a highly competitive pool of more than 100 cities around the world
that applied for a grant of consulting services from IBM.
Since 2010, IBM's citizenship arm has made such Smarter Cities
Challenge grants to more than 130 cities worldwide chosen from
more than 600 applicants, with nearly 800 of IBM's top experts
delivering pro bono services valued at more than USD $68 million. Each consulting engagement has a
commercial value of USD $500,000.
For the upcoming pro bono consultative engagements, IBM may use
Watson's cognitive analytics
capabilities to identify and understand city data such as
transportation patterns or public health trends. Or, natural and
human-influenced meteorological events may be parsed, taken from
the world's largest weather data sets, recorded by The Weather
Company, an IBM Business. Analysis of such information may help
inform IBM's recommendation to city stakeholders to address their
local challenges.
Here's how a typical Smarter Cities Challenge engagement works:
After intense preparation, IBM Smarter Cities Challenge teams,
comprising six IBM experts, spend three weeks working closely with
city staff in each winning city, analyzing data about a critical
issue facing the municipality. Team members consider diverse
perspectives on the topic through meeting with local officials,
citizens, businesses, and not-for-profits. Best practices used by
other cities are studied. After working closely with city
leadership, the IBM team then recommends innovative and
specifically tailored ways to address the issue.
Smarter Cities Challenge engagements have helped cities around
the world to significantly improve the quality of life for their
residents. Projects informed by IBM advice have helped to upgrade
skills of city staff, enabled cities to win prestigious awards, and
made them more competitive. Here are some of the results achieved
to date:
- Memphis, USA and IBM worked to successfully design
a plan for decreasing demand and improving response time for
emergency health services, and for improving long term healthcare,
particularly for the city's most vulnerable citizens.
- Pingtung County, Taiwan
won the 2015 Energy Smart Communities Initiative Best Practices
Award from among 200 submissions across Asia Pacific for its implementation of a smart
microgrid, based on its Smarter Cities Challenge
recommendations.
- Dublin, Ireland worked
with IBM to assess the feasibility of adopting solar power, and
successfully installed solar panels on the roofs of nearly all city
government buildings.
- Porto Alegre, Brazil
created Digital PoA to facilitate online dialogue between citizens
and city officials to identify priorities and shape the municipal
budget. In one outcome, public transportation routes were adjusted
to help underserved residents better access health services.
- Pyeongchang County, South
Korea, host of the 2018 Olympics, is developing and
promoting new tourism opportunities that extend beyond its ski
areas to the natural beauty in the southern part of the county.
This will help close a socioeconomic gap and lay the foundation for
a stronger tourism industry beyond the Winter Games.
- Syracuse, USA, used its Smarter Cities Challenge
insights to identify neighborhoods that were at risk of increased
home vacancies, then apply resources to stabilize the community and
tax base.
- Townsville, Australia
earned the prestigious National Smart Infrastructure Award for a
pilot program to reduce water consumption.
Jennifer Ryan Crozier, IBM's Vice
President of Corporate Citizenship & President of the IBM
Foundation, congratulated the winners, saying, "Over the last seven
years, we have seen strong applications from more than 800 cities
around the world who have proposed ways that IBM's talent and
technology could help them to address their toughest issues, but
2017 really stood out. We congratulate this year's winners
and look forward to collaborating with each of them on the Smarter
Cities Challenge."
A video summarizing IBM Smarter Cities Challenge projects can be
viewed here and more background about the program and its many
successes can be found at www.smartercitieschallenge.org.
Follow all of IBM's citizenship initiatives by visiting the
CitizenIBM blog at www.citizenIBM.com and on Twitter, at
@citizenIBM. For more information about IBM citizenship, please
visit www.ibm.com/ibm/responsibility
Contact(s) information
Ari Fishkind
IBM Media Relations
fishkind@us.ibm.com
914-499-6420
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SOURCE IBM