IBM Intelligent Operations Center for Smarter Cities

The IBM corporation announced in June, 2011 the solution under the name IBM Intelligent Operations Center for Smarter Cities developed to help the cities of any size with formation of complete information idea of work of all municipal managements, departments and services. Implementing analytical opportunities in city transactions through uniform command center, the cities will be able to predict better potential problems, to react to crises and to manage resources.

The operational center Intelligent Operations Center for Smarter Cities will allow the cities to use information and analytics for adoption of more justified and more operational decisions, helping local heads to manage effectively the whole range of the events – as planned and unplanned, such, for example, as deployment of repair crews for preventive maintenance of pumps of a water supply system before they fail, the abnormal notification of road and fire services about the broken fire hydrants or forecasting of traffic jams and preparation of bypass routes.

The IDC Government Insights analytical company estimates the volume of the new market of information technologies for the Reasonable cities (Smarter Cities) in the current year at 34 billion dollars, and growth more than at 18% to 57 billion dollars by 2014.

As most of the population in the world lives in the cities and residential suburbs, the major city systems – water supply, power supply and transport – work at a limit of the opportunities today. The Reasonable city can mean for citizens, for a start, a regular supply water and electricity with a possibility of accurate accounting of consumption, automatic finding of the fastest route before work and the house, safe streets. Both today's more technically equipped and informed consumer wishes and expects that its quality standards of life were approved with inflow of people to the cities and, as a result, with the economic growth of the cities.

Through universal command center of the city will be able:

• To collect carefully, to analyze and act on the basis information on the city systems and services, including the system of public security, the transport system, a water supply system, infrastructure of the building, welfare service and different municipal departments.
• Analyze information of real time for the best modeling and forecasting of problems to minimize their negative impact on citizens.
• Integrate information of real time arriving from the numerous city systems for the purpose of adoption of the coordinated solutions for quick response to events and incidents.
• The operational center Intelligent Operations Center combines the patented technologies of analytics created by IBM Research in cooperation with the cities worldwide, also as well as the dominant technologies purchased by IBM as a result of the last absorption. The center is designed according to requirements of the systems of IBM optimized for workloads.
• The operational center Intelligent Operations Center for Smarter Cities can be expanded for support of a broad spectrum of integration projects on the scale of the city or within separate organizations and departments. City heads can use the service solutions of IBM and its business partners integrating operations on management of the city systems with the Intelligent Operation Center. Examples of the practical implementations on the scale of the city supported by the Intelligent Operations Center for Smarter Cities center cover the systems of public security, transport and water supply.

The system of public security — IBM provides analytical means of real time which help public security specialists to reduce crime rate, to support groups of rapid response and to protect the population, saving, at the same time, the state budget and resources. Authorities of district, federal level and level of the state and also non-governmental organizations can use complex information from sensors, from databases of crimes, from surveillance cameras and other sources for adoption of more weighed and operational solutions. In particular, the software for the analysis of video images working together with Intelligent Operations Center for Smarter Cities can instantly detect and react to threats of physical security. In case of integration into video systems of partners, for example, Cisco Systems, the solution of IBM allows to manage and coordinate video events.

The transport system — Traffic is the most important element of everyday life of any city. Annually American drivers spend 3.7 billion hours (that is equivalent to 5 days on each driver), standing idle in traffic jams and burning 2.3 billion gallons (or 8.74 billion liters) fuels. The transport systems and infrastructures experience the increasing strain in connection with growth of the population and increased requirements to mobility. IBM uses analytical technologies to provide drivers with operational information about traffic conditions for the choice of optimal routes. So, Intelligent Operations Center allows analysts to predict potential transport traffic jams and to model possible options (by a technique "that-if") for minimization of difficulties to traffic. The recommendations of analysts come in the automatic mode to the relevant services of the city and serve for the notification of citizens.

Water supply system — Under the cities millions of kilometers of water pipes are laid worldwide, to many of which more than hundred years. Today up to 60% of water it is lost because of untight pipes, however using a combination of reasonable planning, new technologies and timely service and repair of the corresponding infrastructure these losses can be reduced sharply. The analytical technologies of IBM working with the efficiency close to real time can trace and inform on a status of all infrastructure of a water supply system, from the filtering equipment, water pumps and valves to water reservoirs and the laboratory equipment. Capability perform monitoring of these systems in real time means that potential problems, such as break of the water trunk, small leaks, the failed pump or dangerous overflow of drives of drain waters can be quickly revealed and eliminated, or, even, are predicted and prevented. Intelligent Operations Center for Smarter Cities can also use geospatial data for determination of exact location of problem zones. Over time, the increased knowledge of citizens of level can lead water consumption to change of their relation, behavior and habits that, in turn, will positively affect ecological sustainability.

The technologies which are the cornerstone of the solution Intelligent Operations Center for Smarter Cities allow to create, reuse and add with ease additional features which can provide all range of services, provided to the population in the cities worldwide. The solutions for the Reasonable cities created from the existing assets provide to clients the software with the checked reliable components which already well proved in real projects. IBM creates community of business partners who are engaged in development of additional solutions and specialize in such areas as design and management of water supply, the special equipment (including video cameras and smart meters of consumption) and also the software for city services. Among such business partners working with IBM: AECOM, Badger Meter, Esri, Telvent, Veolia Water North America and VirtualAgility companies.

More detailed information on solutions of IBM for the Reasonable cities (IBM Smarter Cities) can be obtained on the Website www.ibm.com/smartercities.

2013: New products as a part of IBM Smarter Cities Intelligent Operations

On October 8, 2013 the IBM corporation presented the updated software solutions for "the reasonable cities" opening to the city services access to funds of "cloud" analytics promoting in increase in the quality level of service of citizens.

General information

The advanced software of IBM Intelligent Operations provided in the open IBM SmartCloud cloud environment allows to cut down a capital expenditure and costs for implementation of technological solutions.

As a part of a portfolio of software of IBM Smarter Cities Intelligent Operations new products:

• IBM Intelligent City Planning and Operation is schedule system of infrastructure which allows to predict the budget and to plan works;

• IBM Intelligent Operations Center is the system of obtaining permissions and event management which allows to approve different types of works, to predict possible accidents and faults and also helps to organize providing city services;

• IBM Intelligent Water is an analysis system of efficiency of operation of water management which helps to increase performance of water supply systems, increasing infrastructure service life, providing reduction of energy consumption and decrease in losses of water resources.

New versions of IBM Intelligent City Planning and Operation, IBM Intelligent Water and IBM Intelligent Operations Center are available to the order in IBM or through network of business partners of the company.

See Also

• Smart cities (Smart cities, Smart cities)