GLOBAL CHALLENGES

Four Smarter Planet Projects to Watch

Salvatore Salamone | Date: 08-24-10 | Comments

At a recent event, IBM shared details about some of the leading multidisciplinary smarter planet projects in which it has involvement.

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Four Smarter Planet Projects to Watch
The smart planet concept is gaining momentum. The reason: Many aspects of everyday life and most business operations can be improved when more information is collected and suitably analyzed to make more intelligent decisions.

Whether it�s to improve health care, make more efficient use of a limited resource, or simply to optimize a business process, the application of smart technology principles can yield significant results in many cases.

At a recent blogger day event, IBM shared details about some of the leading smarter planet projects it is involved with. Much of the work on these projects is being done by multidisciplinary teams of scientists working in the IBM Research group.

Here are four of the smarter planet projects you should keep an eye on:

The District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority (DC WASA)

The District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority (DC WASA) dates back to the 1800s. Over the years, it has been maintained using paper records. That meant engineers routinely would have to go through paper files to find the status of individual assets within the system.

IBM teamed with the DC WASA to integrate advanced analytics with asset management software and a mapping application from Esri. Now, with their enterprise asset management system, DC WASA engineers can see a detailed map showing the location and condition of each asset at any given point in time.

This implementation gives the system�s engineers real-time, map-based information to help identify potential problems before they occur.

A recent water main break in Washington, D.C. (source: The Washington Post).

�Using predictive analytics, they can now estimate the risk of an infrastructure failure, and fix it before it breaks,� says Katharine Frase, vice president, Industry Solutions and Emerging Business, IBM Research. Predictive analytics are done by processing enormous amounts of data and uncovering patterns related to weather conditions, water use, and hundreds of other variables. Notably, this capability is available without the wide-scale deployment of smart water meters.

The system also enables DC WASA to share and exchange data both internally for planning purposes and externally to assist other agencies, such as sharing real-time statuses of the more than 9,000 public hydrants in Washington, D.C. with the DC Fire and Emergency Medical Services. For example, the status of every hydrant and its water flow capacity can be mapped and seen by the fire department via Google Earth. As firefighters are rushing to the scene, they will know in advance the level of water flow to expect out of the hydrants in the vicinity of a fire.

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