NO 10 IN A SERIES
Building a smarter enterprise: The essential building blocks
Smarter Cities: How cities
can create value from data,
cloud and engagement
Through more than 10,000 engagements and capabilities developed by
$17B in acquisitions, IBM has helped cities around the world harness the
transformational shifts of data, cloud and engagement. Here’s what we’ve
learned about how they’re reshaping cities.
What’s changing in cities?
Many national governments are
focusing on national issues, trans-
ferring responsibility to cities for
providing services, facilities and
infrastructure, such as public safety,
water, energy and transportation.
• In 2012, the federal share of state revenue
in the United States fell to 31.6% from
35.5% in 2010.
• With proposed budget cuts from the
British Department of Works and Pensions,
almost 75% of local authorities state that
they will have to abandon or scale back
welfare schemes designed to provide
emergency help for England’s most
vulnerable citizens.
Cloud services help manage this shrinking
revenue by enabling cities to act and innovate
quickly without huge investments.
As unprecedented numbers of
people flock to cities, citizens
increasingly demand cities that
are safe, easy to get around and
well-functioning. To compete for
talent, jobs and growth, city leaders
are striving to provide these ser-
vices and improve quality of life.
• More than half of the world’s population,
3B+ people, live in cities, and that is as large-scale protests in more than
expected to rise 66% by 2050.
• Infrastructure leaks are responsible
for up to 60% of water supply losses
in urban areas.
• 48M new cars will hit the world’s roads
this year – more than 130,000 a day –
with much of this growth directly affecting
urban areas.
• 2012’s Hurricane Sandy cost New York
City about $42B, and the 2013 Lushan
Earthquake cost that county $14B.
Data and analytics enable city leaders to
transform how they see city systems, improv-
ing decision making and changing the way
agencies operate alone and with each other.
The rapid rise of social media and
new modes of engagement have
given citizens, civic groups and
popular movements unprecedent-
ed voice. This has also opened
doors for two-way communication
between citizens and government.
• In the past four years, social media has fa-
cilitated significant political change as well
15 countries.
• After the 2010 Haiti Earthquake, Usahidi
enabled volunteers to create disaster zone
maps via mobile and social channels.
• After Hurricane Sandy, AirBnB modified
its platform overnight to help 1,400 New
Yorkers find free housing; while SeeClickFix
was used to report over 800 issues in just
24 hours after landfall.
Secure mobile and social platforms build new
opportunities for positive engagement.
Where are we seeing cities focus their efforts?

Since 2008, as we’ve helped cities around the world harness the power of data, cloud and engagement,
we’ve found that cities often do not want to build the function they need – they want to buy it. So we’ve devel-
oped cloud-based management centers that help municipalities capture the potential of data, analytics and
new modes of engagement via digital services. Using Intelligent Operations software, IBM Global Business
Services expertise, and IBM’s broad analytics capabilities, these centers help cities get started and realize
value right away, while providing a robust foundation for expansion, often getting insight from data in as little
as a week. To date, we’ve focused these management centers on three areas of major challenges and big
returns – emergency management, transportation and water.

Emergency Management Transportation Water

IBM’s Emergency Management Center
gives cities dramatically enhanced situational
awareness in 30 seconds or less -- unparal-
leled in the global marketplace.
These Centers enable cities to:
• Quickly establish agile and secure
emergency operations via cloud services.
• Optimize planning by integrating and
analyzing vast amounts of structured and
unstructured data that inform predictive
modeling before an event so people and
resources are ready to respond.
• Take immediate coordinated action,
facilitated by social and mobile, to save
lives, protect property and minimize the
impact of emergencies on people and
economic activity.
• Restore services quickly in critical
systems such as roadways and utilities.
• Analyze preparedness and response
to improve outcomes for future events.
IBM’s cloud-enabled Transportation Manage-
ment Center has helped some cities reduce
congestion by up to 25%.
Transportation Management Centers
help cities:
• Tap into cloud services to quickly gain
insight to inform policy, improve traffic
flows and better respond to incidents,
thereby reducing congestion.
• Employ advanced analytics and predictive
modeling to reduce the negative environ-
mental effects of traffic and the economic
costs of congestion, while boosting lems with water quality, a process facil-
economic vitality.
• Use social and mobile channels to deliver
travel advisories and influence citizen
behavior by guiding citizens in real-time servation and sustainability.
to help make commutes quicker and
less stressful.
IBM’s Water Management Center can help
cities reduce their water management data
collection budget by 50%, while also reducing
spending on physical water infrastructure by
10-20%.
The Centers allow cities to:
• Rapidly set up operations via cloud.
• Use data analytics to reduce water
leakages and losses, identify potential
delivery disruption and better forecast
water demand through simulations.
• Quickly identify and respond to prob-
itated by social and mobile alerts and
response channels.
• Protect water supplies while driving con-
• Gather and integrate detailed, real-time
weather and water system data to predict
flooding and take action to head it off.

And, this is only the beginning: we’re expanding this scope by applying these centers to other areas within city systems – such as buildings, health-
care and employment – that can scale as returns from investment grow. For example, Miami started with just one water project, and now they have
19 projects helping to improve everything from bus routes to terror alerts. Combined with our other more customized solutions such as Curam,
which enables better healthcare and social programs management, and i2, which facilitates data integration, analytics and predictive modeling to
keep cities safe, this range of options means each city can start and tailor according to their needs.

Why IBM?

• IBM is the leader in secure systems integration technologies
centered on cloud, mobile, social and analytics and how they apply
to cities: Frost and Sullivan, Navigant Research, Forrester and IDC
have all ranked IBM as the lead provider of Smart Cities solutions.
• Since 2008, we have had more than 10,000 engagements with
cities of all sizes. We have assisted in multiple service areas, includ-
ing transportation, water, public safety, emergency management,
healthcare, energy, asset management, education, social services,
and the management of ‘greenfield’ developments – from strategy
all the way to implementation.
• We have unparalleled expertise in real world systems and how they
work. For example, in the area of transportation, 80% of the world’s
travel reservations are processed on IBM systems. All of the world’s
top 5 ocean container companies, 7 of the top 10 freight service
providers, 10 of the top 10 rail companies, and 10 of the top 10
global airlines rely on IBM.
• Along with our IBM Business Partners – such as ESRI, Veolia,
Motorola and AECOM, who play a role in delivering complementary
solutions and industry expertise to address customer needs – we
bring unmatched insight from across industries to help city leaders.