Do you still remember the launch of CityOne, IBM’s first Smarter Planet interactive simulation with real-world business, environmental, and logistical problems for smarter cities and industries?  Remember how a player has a view of everything happening around the city?  How cool would that be if that happened in real life?

IBM aims to turn this vision into reality with their Intelligent Operations Center for Smarter Cities which is designed to provide a general view of information across city departments and agencies.

IBM Intelligent Operations Center monitors and manages city services. It provides operational insight into daily city operations through centralized intelligence. Now cities, government agencies, and enterprises can optimize operational efficiencies and improve planning.

“The future is smart cities: using intelligent technology in connection with city planning. The IBM Intelligent Operations Center for Smarter Cities has been designed to allow city leaders to access integrated, city-wide information in a single, unified view and deliver rapid, coordinated responses to events” noted Pradeep Nair, Director, Software Group, IBM India/ South Asia.

IOC will enable real-time communication and collaboration needed to coordinate actions and resolve issues in an efficient manner; Significantly reduce the impact of crisis situations; Reduce the overall cost of maintenance and repairs; Minimize disruptions to public services and activities for citizens living and traveling in the city; Preserve critical services and resources and minimize life-threatening issues; Allow cities to recognize events as they arise; and Put responses in place to manage impacts back to a steady state as quickly as possible.

IOC can be deployed within a city’s data centers as well as through a subscription service hosted on the IBM SmartCloud, a service that provides rapid and secure internet access to the capabilities of the IBM Intelligent Operations Center on an IBM cloud so cities can rapidly adopt new capabilities while controlling cost.

IBM IOC Key Features

• Incident reporting and tracking.
• Situation awareness and reporting.
• Real-time collaboration.
• Resource and critical asset management.
• “Blink and Think” in response to visual KPIs
• The ability to open standard connection points to existing and future systems.
• An easy-to-use interface that is designed for multiple user profiles — from senior managers to daily operators
• A “city in your pocket” feature giving insight into your city’s current issues via mobile devices

This project is part of IBM’s Next Big Wave Technologies offering for the Indian market.  IBM has been busy acquiring cloud computing companies and with these types of projects, you won’t have to wonder why.  This kind of project would accumulate massive amounts of data and IBM would need servers and storage for big data in order for this plan to work.  Aside from this, if they plan on making more Smart Cities, IBM needs partners that would help these cities become independent and be able to use this service and analyze data being collected.