Combating Congestion With Cash And Games
BY BEN SCHILLER, fastcoexist.com
Stanford is employing a new trick to eliminate the post-work rush hour. Let people win (small) prizes if they arrive or leave outside of rush hour. Get to the office early, and you could make enough for a free lunch.
In the battle against…
The Internet of Things: By 2020, between 22 and 50 billion devices will be connected to the Internet, providing citizens with an unprecedented array of smart applications and services. Europe is confronted with the challenge of remaining at the cutting-edge of this Internet of Things revolution while addressing the complex policy issues that it raises (privacy, security, ethics).
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Check out all the original posts around Urban Planning — and the broader topic of Smarter Cities — from thought leaders across IBM and the world on the Smarter Planet blog.
‘Smart’ cities aim to predict — and manage — traffic future | Greenbang
The “internet of things,” as the smart grid is often called, entails making our lives, homes and cities more efficient by connecting all the pieces with networking technology and applying advanced strategies like “big data” analytics to better understand how all the pieces interact.
The analogy to the computing internet, though, isn’t entirely applicable. For one, the internet of things is aimed not only at making our systems work better and smarter, but to actually help predict the future.
Consider that bane of metropolitan motorists everywhere, for example: the city traffic jam. Where the traditional response has been to build new roads, expand mass transit or institute congestion pricing, smart technology aims to help predict bottlenecks before they occur and manage traffic accordingly to prevent jams.
Look at what IBM is currently doing in the Chinese city of Zhenjiang. Using its Intelligent Operations Center for Smarter Cities, Big Blue aims to help the city of three million use analytics to not only enable real-time bus monitoring and management, but to simulate traffic flow patterns ahead of time. By anticipating traffic problems before they happen, IBM’s Intelligent Transportation technology is designed to improve the city’s public transit system and “increase traffic throughput” … in other words, make it possible for more traffic to flow through streets without the need to build more roads or otherwise radically change the existing infrastructure.
“(W)e will make our public transportation system faster and more efficient, while making our city a better place to live in,” said Mingnian Yin, director of Zhenjiang’s Reform Commission.
Let the Robot Drive: The Autonomous Car of the Future Is Here | Wired
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Google isn’t the only company with driverless cars on the road. Indeed, just about every traditional automaker is developing its own self-driving model, peppering Silicon Valley with new R&D labs to work on the challenge. Last year, a BMW drove itself down the Autobahn, from Munich to Ingolstadt (“the home of Audi,” as BMW’s Dirk Rossberg told me at the company’s outpost in Mountain View, California). Audi sent an autonomous vehicle up Pikes Peak, while VW, in conjunction with Stanford, is building a successor to Junior. At the Tokyo Auto Show in November, Toyota unveiled its Prius AVOS (Automatic Vehicle Operation System), which can be summoned remotely. GM’s Alan Taub predicts that self-driving cars will be on the road by the decade’s end. Groups like the Society of Automotive Engineers have formed special committees to draft autonomous-vehicle standards.
Business Analytics - Turning Data Into Insight (by IBM)
In an era of Smarter Analytics, it is imperative that businesses leverage the massive quantities of data available to them. In order to remain competitive, data must be transformed into insight and integrated into business processes.
Connect w/ Simon Thomas at http://www.linkedin.com/pub/simon-thomas/1/228/45
As the world becomes more connected through trillions of sensors, the ability to transform data into insight that can better monitor, manage and predict potential issues and opportunities is critical. Each startup participating at the SmartCamp Global Finals has created software that is designed to analyze large volumes of data. The finalists are:
Could Twitter Help Us Create Smarter Transit Routes?
“Traditional city maps visualize just one aspect of urban design—the city’s intended structure, full stop. But add in a layer that visualizes how people actually use the city, and then the map becomes much more interesting. Eric Fischer did exactly that when he used Twitter’s API to collect tens of thousands of geotagged tweets and map them onto the streets of New York, Chicago, and the San Francisco Bay area. The maps amount to something close to adesire path on a macro scale: The maps show where our buses and subways should be, if they conformed to the way we actually move and live.”
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4 Cities Using Tech to Alleviate Traffic | Mashable
There are one billion cars on the road, and that number could reach 2.5 billion by 2020. That auto congestion not only wreaks havoc on the environment, but also frustrates the commuters sitting in traffic on their way to work. The IBM Commuter Pain Index compiled traffic angst data by city and found that 87% of people had been stuck in traffic in the past three years, and 31% said the traffic was so bad that they turned around and went home. Clearly, traffic is a major issue when it comes to metropolitan living and urban mobility, but help is on the way.
“There are a lot of examples of big data and analytics that were previously unmanageable that are now becoming reasonable targets, most of which could be considered event-based: device instrumentation, weather data, social media, credit card transactions, crime statistics, traffic data and more. There are also some interesting problems in determining identity and relationships: figuring out who people really are even when they use different versions of their name, and who they are connected to in a variety of different ways that might indicate potential for fraud or other misrepresentation. Scary and big-brotherish to some, but undeniably providing organizations (including governments) with deeper insights into their customers and constituents. If those who complain about governments using this sort of technology “against” them would learn how to use it themselves, the tables might be turned as we gain insight into how well government is providing services to us.”
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BBC News - Smart cities get their own operating system
Cities could soon be looking after their citizens all by themselves thanks to an operating system designed for the metropolis.
The Urban OS works just like a PC operating system but keeps buildings, traffic and services running smoothly.
The software takes in data from sensors dotted around the city to keep an eye on what is happening.
In the event of a fire the Urban OS might manage traffic lights so fire engines can reach the blaze swiftly.
The idea is for the Urban OS to gather data from sensors buried in buildings and many other places to keep an eye on what is happening in an urban area.
The sensors monitor everything from large scale events such as traffic flows across the entire city down to more local phenomena such as temperature sensors inside individual rooms.
The OS completely bypasses humans to manage communication between sensors and devices such as traffic lights, air conditioning or water pumps that influence the quality of city life.
Channelling all the data coming from these sensors and services into a over-arching control system had lots of benefits, said Steve Lewis, head of Living PlanIT- the company behind Urban OS.
IBM’s Smarter Parking Starter Kit equips parking meters with sensors and analyzes the resulting information
IBM has launched a system designed to help cities ease parking congestion and collect more parking fees, the company announced Wednesday. The service could also help motorists find parking spaces more easily in crowded urban areas.
“The existing parking systems are pretty inefficient [in terms] of how cities manage them,” said Vinodh Swaminathan, IBM’s director of intelligent transportation systems. “Think of a parking spot as a revenue-producing asset. With the ability to instrument these assets, we can manage them far more efficiently,” he said.
IBM is offering this system in conjunction with San Francisco-based startup Streetline, which offers remote sensors that can determine if a parking space is taken by a car. IBM provides the analytical software, by way of a cloud service, that aggregates data from these sensors so it can be used to better understand how a city’s parking spaces are used over time.
