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Livable Cities of the Future: Proceedings of a Symposium Honoring the Legacy of George Bugliarello (2014)

Chapter: IBM Intelligent Operations Center: A Breakthrough in Information Technology for Smarter Cities--Ruthie D. Lyle and Colin Harrison

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Suggested Citation:"IBM Intelligent Operations Center: A Breakthrough in Information Technology for Smarter Cities--Ruthie D. Lyle and Colin Harrison." National Academy of Engineering. 2014. Livable Cities of the Future: Proceedings of a Symposium Honoring the Legacy of George Bugliarello. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18671.
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IBM Intelligent Operations Center: A Breakthrough in Information Technology for Smarter Cities

Ruthie D. Lyle

IBM Corporation
and
Colin Harrison
Smarter Cities Technical Strategy

ABSTRACT

A smarter city is one that makes optimal use of all the interconnected information available to better understand and control operations and to optimize the use of limited resources. In support of this vision IBM has established an Intelligent Operations Center that enables the optimization of critical information stored in disparate systems across multiple departments for the benefit of the city’s population, economy, and greater ecosystem. This paper provides an overview of the IBM Intelligent Operations Center and briefly presents examples of its real-world application.

THE PRINCIPLE OF “SMART”

Smarter Planet

IBM’s Smarter Planet Strategy can be described as an articulation of capabilities that are realized by leveraging technological advances and insights. Intelligence is infused into the systems, processes, and infrastructure that make up our world, making it “smarter.” As a result it is possible to make decisions based on evidence instead of habit or opinion, and to anticipate and respond to events rather than simply reacting to them after they have occurred.

Suggested Citation:"IBM Intelligent Operations Center: A Breakthrough in Information Technology for Smarter Cities--Ruthie D. Lyle and Colin Harrison." National Academy of Engineering. 2014. Livable Cities of the Future: Proceedings of a Symposium Honoring the Legacy of George Bugliarello. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18671.
×

The digital and physical worlds are converging such that systems, processes, and infrastructure are becoming intelligent, interconnected, and instrumented. Embedded instrumentation such as actuators, programmable logic controllers, and distributed intelligent sensors are in everything from traditional infrastructure such as bridges and pipelines to personal devices such as smart phones, appliances, and even living organisms such as agriculture, livestock, and human beings.1

Smarter Cities

A city can be thought of as a complex system of systems with dynamic interconnections and interdependencies across individual systems or domains. Interdependency is inherent in complex systems. Health care, for example, can be dependent on domains such as transportation, environment, and agriculture; green transportation options for walking and biking in a city can enhance citizens’ health, as can decreased emissions, better air quality, and improvements in the quality of drinking water and food.

Cities all over the world are in a state of unprecedented growth, especially in emerging nations, placing a huge strain on the underlying processes and systems that support them. Unbridled consumption of energy, increases in emissions of greenhouse gases, and the unavailability of drinking water are examples of the challenges that impair quality of life. There is thus a tremendous mandate for positive change.

What if cities could achieve effective and efficient operations by using information that is, in some cases, already available and applying insights based on this information?

CITY OPERATIONS AND MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS

Critical information in a city is typically stored in multiple disparate systems across multiple disconnected departments. A fundamental change is needed for a city to become effective and efficient by using available critical information to become “smarter.” The IBM Intelligent Operations Center (IOC) for Smart Cities is designed to enable this fundamental change.

IOC enables city leaders, managers, and planners to leverage information across all city agencies and departments, anticipate problems and mini-

___________________

1 “IBM Offers Smarter City Assessment Tool to Help Cities Prepare for Challenges and Opportunities of Unprecedented Urbanization,” June 24, 2009, available at www.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressureless/27791.wss.

Suggested Citation:"IBM Intelligent Operations Center: A Breakthrough in Information Technology for Smarter Cities--Ruthie D. Lyle and Colin Harrison." National Academy of Engineering. 2014. Livable Cities of the Future: Proceedings of a Symposium Honoring the Legacy of George Bugliarello. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18671.
×

mize the impact of disruption to services and operations, and coordinate cross-agency resources to respond to both real-time and anticipated issues. This approach for managing the city creates a fully integrated and interconnected holistic perspective as shown in Figure 1. Among the features of this system are gateways connecting IOC to various sources of data in the city (e.g., traffic and public safety), a visual interface between IOC and its operators, and bidirectional communication and interaction with citizens. Finally, analytic computational capabilities enable customization of solutions.

In terms of usability, the IOC provides an enhanced visual user interface that can be customized based on operator role. The interface makes it possible to

•   bring together different data sources to provide a comprehensive perspective,

•   present easily consumable critical information,

•   display summarized data that can be analyzed to give insight, and

•   support real-time workflow and alerts.

image

FIGURE 1 IBM Smarter Cities Cross-Domain Operations Center. KPI = key performance indicator.

Suggested Citation:"IBM Intelligent Operations Center: A Breakthrough in Information Technology for Smarter Cities--Ruthie D. Lyle and Colin Harrison." National Academy of Engineering. 2014. Livable Cities of the Future: Proceedings of a Symposium Honoring the Legacy of George Bugliarello. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18671.
×

image

FIGURE 2 IBM Intelligent Operations Center User Interface

Figure 2 shows IOC being engaged by various operators. Wall monitors show multiple sources and types of information such as weather forecast data and traffic flow data. The interface can be thought of as a visual control center with multiple dashboard views available depending on the role of the user.

USING IOC TO ADDRESS REAL-WORLD ISSUES

IOC-based solutions are amenable to private- as well as public-sector application (Figure 3). Of particular interest and relevance are large sports stadiums, which have many of the same issues as a typical city. Following is a summary of two examples, Smarter Cities and Smarter Stadiums.

Smarter City Implementation

Rio de Janeiro is the second largest city in Brazil and the third largest metropolitan area in South America. In April 2010, faced with what is believed to be the worst flood in its history, the city leaders scrambled to leverage available resources in response. At their request, IBM helped to implement IOC together with IBM’s Deep Thunder weather monitoring, creating a much smarter city with diverse “smart” capabilities. Initially the focus was on preventing death from annual flooding, but with positive political will the solution expanded to enable monitoring of multiple emergency situations.

Smarter Stadium Implementation

At the request of the Miami Dolphins football team, IBM, using the IOC, helped to transform the Sun Life Stadium into an entertainment destination

Suggested Citation:"IBM Intelligent Operations Center: A Breakthrough in Information Technology for Smarter Cities--Ruthie D. Lyle and Colin Harrison." National Academy of Engineering. 2014. Livable Cities of the Future: Proceedings of a Symposium Honoring the Legacy of George Bugliarello. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18671.
×

image

FIGURE 3 Types of IBM Intelligent Operations Center Uses

for fans. The stadium’s mission is to become nationally and internationally recognized as the premier sports and entertainment center in the Americas. During games and other live events the stadium becomes a vibrant “mini city.” The customized IOC solution enables information to be managed across all stadium assets and departments to facilitate data-driven decision making, anticipate problems to minimize the impact of disruption to stadium operations, and coordinate resources to respond to issues rapidly and efficiently, all of which helps to ensure the best fan experience possible.

SUMMARY

The principle of “smart” is fundamentally about recognizing the interconnectivity and interdependency of a complex system and applying technology to gain insight and formulate decisions. Smarter Cities efforts are about using information more intelligently to make better predictions and decisions that can improve both safety and quality of life. IBM’s Intelligent Operations Center provides the tools to analyze and act on that information.

Suggested Citation:"IBM Intelligent Operations Center: A Breakthrough in Information Technology for Smarter Cities--Ruthie D. Lyle and Colin Harrison." National Academy of Engineering. 2014. Livable Cities of the Future: Proceedings of a Symposium Honoring the Legacy of George Bugliarello. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18671.
×
Page 89
Suggested Citation:"IBM Intelligent Operations Center: A Breakthrough in Information Technology for Smarter Cities--Ruthie D. Lyle and Colin Harrison." National Academy of Engineering. 2014. Livable Cities of the Future: Proceedings of a Symposium Honoring the Legacy of George Bugliarello. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18671.
×
Page 90
Suggested Citation:"IBM Intelligent Operations Center: A Breakthrough in Information Technology for Smarter Cities--Ruthie D. Lyle and Colin Harrison." National Academy of Engineering. 2014. Livable Cities of the Future: Proceedings of a Symposium Honoring the Legacy of George Bugliarello. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18671.
×
Page 91
Suggested Citation:"IBM Intelligent Operations Center: A Breakthrough in Information Technology for Smarter Cities--Ruthie D. Lyle and Colin Harrison." National Academy of Engineering. 2014. Livable Cities of the Future: Proceedings of a Symposium Honoring the Legacy of George Bugliarello. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18671.
×
Page 92
Suggested Citation:"IBM Intelligent Operations Center: A Breakthrough in Information Technology for Smarter Cities--Ruthie D. Lyle and Colin Harrison." National Academy of Engineering. 2014. Livable Cities of the Future: Proceedings of a Symposium Honoring the Legacy of George Bugliarello. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18671.
×
Page 93
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At the beginning of the 20th century an estimated five percent of the world's population lived in cities. Today, half the world's population is urbanized. Urban sustainability is multifaceted and encompasses security, economics, environment and resources, health, and quality of life. It can be viewed as the intersection of two extremely complex and not yet fully understood processes, urbanization and global sustainability, which will increasingly overlap as urban populations continue to grow. Effective policies are critical for addressing urban sustainability, and must be politically realistic in deciding on appropriate balances, such as centralized versus decentralized systems, "soft" versus "hard" solutions, local versus regional focus, agriculture versus pollution, and free markets versus interventions.

Livable Cities of the Future, a symposium honoring the legacy of George Bugliarello, was hosted October 26, 2012, by the Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly) in the Pfizer Auditorium of the Bern Dibner Library of Science and Technology. The event brought together more than 200 engineers, civic leaders, educators, and futurists to discuss how George Bugliarello's vision manifests itself in innovative urban planning for the cities of tomorrow. This report is a summary of the presentations and discussion at that event.

The symposium objectives were to cultivate ideas for best practices and innovative strategies for sustainable urban development and to facilitate the evolution of New York City to a real-life laboratory for urban innovation. Participants heard the perspectives and experiences of representatives from private and public service operators, infrastructure agencies, and the academic community. Elected officials and other stakeholders in urban and other sectors examined issues critical to resilient and sustainable cities, such as energy, water supply and treatment, public health, security infrastructure, transportation, telecommunications, and environmental protection.

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