IBM today announced that it has opened the IBM Smarter Cities Challenge grant program to new applications for 2012. Smarter Cities Challenge is a three-year, 100-city, $50 million grant program in which IBM’s top technical experts and consultants provide actionable advice to urban centers. Issues that IBM’s consultants addressed this past year were diverse, ranging from transportation and public safety, to economic development and budgeting. One of the funded recipients of IBM Smarter Cities Challenge grants from last year was Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Leaders from Milwaukee’s private sector, and local urban agriculture organizations are establishing an Urban Agriculture and Aquaponics Council to advance the aquaponics industry, an eco-friendly approach to agriculture that recycles water from fish farms to nourish crops without the use of soil. Participants want to collaborate more effectively to make food healthier and more profitable, available, and affordable — and in the process, create opportunity and local jobs.
This highly successful grant program provides select applicant cities with access to teams of elite IBM employees with expertise on a variety of urban-related matters, such as finance, sustainability, public safety, and citizen services. After conferring with officials, citizens, businesses, academics and community leaders, the IBM teams recommend actions to make the delivery of services to citizens more efficient and innovative. Issues addressed include jobs, health, public safety, transportation, social services, recreation, education, energy, and sustainability.
Key factors for a successful grant application include strong city leadership, willingness to collaborate with many stakeholders, and the desire to make their cities smarter and more efficient. Cities will also need to champion actionable and measurable efforts that have the potential to make a real impact on the lives of its citizens. In addition to Milwaukee some of the other dozen cites participating included: Rio de Janiero, Brazil, Johannesburg, South Africa, Boulder, Colorado and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As in 2011, selected applicants must demonstrate a commitment to using all publicly available urban data to help identify local problems and solutions. To that end, IBM will provide special assistance to each winning city on the use of City Forward, a free online tool it developed with public policy experts that explores trends and statistics in a visual way, and which can be adapted for the study of any number of issues across cities. The deadline for 2012 grant applications is December 16.
Hello!
I have been concerned about how humanity will solve the problems of food, energy and transportation provision once there is no more petroleum ever since the early 1980s, when I was living in England and Switzerland, both of which consume only approximately 1/5 of the energy per capita that we do in the USA!
As a designer who also taught at one of the best regarded university-level schools on the planet, the Swiss campus of Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design, I have been working on the world’s first 100% sustainable global infrastructure, which can be viewed at my website at http://www.greenmillennium.eu
I would like to propose a challenge to all architects, urban planners, engineers and designers to create just such an infrastructure, as we must create something for the world’s 7 billion people well before all the petroleum is gone, and our stable global climate with it!
If the president would allow drilling on public lands there would be no petroleum problem. If we take care of the petroleum problem all the other problems will fall into place.