IBM launched CityOne today, the first Smarter Planet interactive simulation with real-world business, environmental and logistical problems for smarter cities and industries.

There are 100 challenges to fix via technologies which includes reducing traffic congestion, save water, streamline supply chains and to make use of alternative energy during crisis. It will give business leaders, city planners and government energy a taste of solving real-life problems, balancing the city’s financial, environmental and sociological interests.

Also, the game simulates challenge on how to attain and increase revenue and profit goals, enhance customer satisfaction and making the environment greener at reduced expense. The players will have to make use technologies for a more efficient management including business process management, service reuse, cloud computing and collaborative technologies.

IBM’s mission is for people to be more intelligent. Experts have it that the world will face problems with the continued increase of urbanization and population in general, which the population is expected to double by 2050. Cities cover 70% of energy consumption, emit 80% of greenhouse gases and lose as much as 20% of water supply from infrastructure leaks. A 1.2 trillion bloat in excess merchandise is also expected within cities, and bankers will be handling 25 billion market data messages each day, stressing their system to the limits. CityOne aims to integrate technologies within cities to cope up with this expansion.

Key organizations like EPA has contributed to the making of CityOne:

“Creating greater awareness and educating the public about protecting human health and the environment is an EPA priority, and serious games can be useful tools for users to learn about processes and systems reflective of the real world,” said Andy Miller, PE, Chief, Atmospheric Protection Branch, EPA Research and Development. “By cooperating with IBM CityOne developers, EPA is helping users by allowing them to more thoroughly investigate environmental issues and better understand complex energy and water interactions presented in the game. EPA’s collaboration in this project will help increase awareness and understanding of how different choices that are made in the various game scenarios affect environmental outcomes.”

Also, the game enables  players and IBM industry experts to communicate since the company managed to link it with cloud-delivered business process management capabilities.