IBM assists with urban information overload

At the SmarterCities forum today in Berlin, IBM announced that it is offering a Smarter City Assessment Tool to help cities better understand the demands of an increasingly urbanized world.

Recognizing the pressure increasing urbanization will place on urban planners and local governments, IBM has developed the Smarter City Assessment Tool, to help cities focus on how best to move forward.

“Cities are in the midst of a realignment of power – with greater influence highlighted by greater responsibility,” said Peter Korsten, Global Leader for the IBM Institute for Business Value. “Aspects of a city’s operations that city managers have previously been unable to measure – and therefore unable to influence – are increasingly being digitized, creating brand new data points. With the greater digitization of its core systems and the use of advanced analytic capabilities, cities can enhance decision-making and improve urban planning.”

Additionally IBM’s Institute for Business Value, part of IBM Global Business Services, is doing extensive research into cities and has just published the first in a series of three studies on smarter cities.

IBM defines a smarter city as one that makes optimal use of all the interconnected information available today in order to better understand and control its operations and optimize the use of limited resources.