Elizabeth Leigh
IBM has packaged together a slew of big data and analytics tools that are designed for cities that want to make data-driven decisions for providing public services.
The company has established new Smarter Cities management centers for Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Montpellier, France in an effort to help transform the management of transport, water and emergency services, IBM said Wednesday.
Cloud-based centers will work to provide actionable insights for municipality officials to apply in situations such as resource allocation, traffic management and emergency first response.
“For the first time, we have the tools that can be applied broadly across city departments to give us greater flexibility to see reality and turn data into decisions,†said Otto Doll, chief information officer, City of Minneapolis.
“In any city, an issue may reside in one department, but the answer lies in another. Analytics can enable a city to tell meaningful stories about what is going on in real-time through data,†he added.
IBM has also deployed its Intelligent Operations software, which provides pattern discovery, performance metrics and insight sharing capabilities.
