IBM reveals green innovations set to make our cities ‘smarter’
Louise Bateman
14th December 2009
Cars and city buses that will ‘run on empty’, smarter water systems that will reduce waste by 50 per cent and citizens rewarded for greener living – these are some of the green innovations global technology company IBM predicts will change our cities within the next five years.
In its fourth-annual ‘Next 5 in 5’ innovation predictions, set to be officially unveiled later this week, IBM has picked five emerging technologies it believes are set to transform cities across the globe between now and 2015, based on market and social trends and the work IBM is currently conducting in its labs around the world.
IBM is working with a number of cities across the world, including Manchester in the UK, to create smarter urban areas based on technologies it is developing.
Today, the company offered a sneak preview to some UK journalist of the sort of work being conducted at its Hursley Park development laboratories near Winchester in Hampshire.
The laboratories are pioneering work in everything from telemetry – remote measuring and reporting of information that could soon allow us all to remotely control the energy being used in our homes – to sensor technology that allows the tracking of individual food products in the supply chain from source to retail outlet. This same technology, says IBM, could one day even enable drivers of cars to find available parking spaces in our congested towns and cities.
The Hursley Centre is a key player in IBM’s ‘Smarter Cities’ programme, part of the company’s ‘Smarter Planet’, a vision of an increasingly instrumented and interconnected world that is also being made more intelligent through technologies and systems that not only help to solve problems, such as identity theft and terrorism, but also problems such as energy security and climate change.
IBM says it has chosen to focus on making cities smarter because the world is experiencing unprecedented urbanisation – an estimated 60 million people are moving to cities and urban areas each year and last year, for the first time in history, the majority of the world’s population resided in cities.
As well as innovations around public health and the emergency services, IBM is predicting that within the next five years most vehicles in cities will run on new battery technology rather than fossil fuels. And thanks to IBM scientists and partners it is working with, these new batteries will enable electric vehicles to travel 300 to 500 miles on a single charge – up from 50 to 100 miles currently. Cars will be able to be charged in public places and use renewable energy, such as wind power, for charging so they no longer rely on coal-powered plants.
“With Denmark we are working on an intelligent infrastructure that will allow us to power batteries from sustainable energy,” said Rashik Parmar, chief technology officer, North East Europe, IBM.
When it comes to water – one of the most worrying problems facing many cities, according to Parmar – IBM is working with cities in the US and the Isle of Malta among others on smarter water systems that will reduce waste by 50 per cent and advanced water purification technologies that will reduce energy used to transport water by up to 20 per cent.
Interactive meters and sensors will be integrated into the water and energy systems, providing us with real time, accurate information about our water consumption so we will be able to make better decisions about how and when we use this valuable resource.
Another major innovation IBM is predicting over the next five years and is researching with cities around the world is the creation by city councils of sustainability reward schemes to incentivise citizens to be greener.
“We are going to see big innovations to encourage citizens to be greener,” said Parmar.
In exchange for reducing their carbon footprint, citizens will receive gift card credits redeemable at select businesses that sign up as part of city-wide sustainability initiatives. Based on cap and trade carbon markets already operating in Europe for businesses, citizens will also buy and trade credits in internet auction marketplaces to offset their daily carbon footprint.
IBM revealed its smarter cities predictions the same day The Climate Group, BT and the Digital Energy Solutions Campaign launched ‘Smart 2020:Pathways To Scale’, a website that will track progress made by the information and communication technology (ICT) industry in tackling climate change.
Those behind Pathways To Scale say ICT has the opportunity to reduce global carbon emissions by 15 per cent by 2020. Interestingly, they make a number of recommendations that chime with the work being carried out by IBM at its lab in Hursley. These include ICT that provides real-time energy information for all, urban-based pilot projects and smart grid technology.
“User-generated content drove Web 2.0, and user-generated energy information and ‘the internet of things’ is our future. With a strong global agreement to tackle climate change, ICT infrastructure will be a key enabler in the short-term of carbon efficiency on a global scale,” said Molly Webb, director of Strategic Engagement, The Climate Group.
Chris Tuppen, chief sustainability officer at BT, added: “This latest research highlights the need to link a number of ICT solutions to deliver the level of transformational change needed to establish the low carbon economy. This will mostly happen through innovative public/private partnerships.”