Since the conception of Smarter Planet, IBM has been relentless in its efforts to transform our planet into a better place to live, spreading the word about its breakthrough technologies that aim to solve congested city traffic, insufficient water supplies, and other hiccups keeping us from efficient communication, transportation, healthcare and more.

Big Blue has spearheaded a massive initiative building smarter cities in the US, and other countries as well.  Let’s look at some of the recent developments in IBM’s Smarter Planet project.

• Smarter Governance

IBM will be providing smart solutions for businesses and institutions to the Republic of Ghana via its Smarter Planet initiative.  This sets out to deliver recommendations and solutions to help several government agencies improve their capacity to deliver efficient and effective services to their respective stakeholders.

A multi-national team of IBM specialists recently concluded their tour of duty in Ghana and discovered that the country had gaps in Physical, Technical and Human Resource systems.  During the tour, the team was able to develop recommendations, plans, and tools for improving these systems.  With the aid of IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative, the Ghana Electoral Commission, the Ghana Chamber of Mines and the Ghana Audit Service (GAS), will be equipped with cutting edge technology solutions, services and fresh ideas on business and governance.

• Smarter Cities

In 2009, the City of Dubuque and IBM announced the Smarter Sustainable Dubuque Initiative, one of the first “smarter” sustainable cities in the U.S.  The efforts have mainly focused on the city’s water, electricity, discards and transportation systems, but with a new player to aid their efforts, it will now include citizen health and wellness through the pilot of an aggregate “CityView” Community Engagement Platform (CEP), a joint effort of IBM Research and the University of Iowa College of Public Health, which is developed, hosted, and supported by IBM Research in the IBM cloud environment.

Element Blue, an IBM Premier Partner has joined the program to provide a separate, hosted IOC for Dubuque to interact with the CEP and create a single view of updates and integration into the system.

Community volunteers can download an Android app, which will be able to track activities that can be compared with their set goals, and the results of other volunteers.

“This interaction is expected to help participants assess the effectiveness of their chosen actions/activities towards maintaining and improving their wellness,” said  Michael C. Van Milligen, Dubuque City Manager. “The results of the pilot will be used by the City, IBM Research and the University of Iowa College of Public Health to determine the extent to which these new technologies can improve health and wellness results, and if a larger research project would be feasible. The hosting and metric analysis for the pilot will be available through the IBM Intelligent Operations Center [delivered by Element Blue].”

• Ads with purpose

Creating a smarter planet, or city, is not always about connecting things to the internet.  It can be as simple as transforming an annoying ad into something that is useful, even beyond the information it provides.

With the aid of Ogilvy & Mather France, IBM was able to launch an ad campaign for its People for Smarter Cities Project.  The campaign consists a series of ads that puts a billboard to good use.  One add transforms into a ramp to aid people on the street carrying luggage or pushing trolleys or even for bikers or those using wheelchairs.  Another ad becomes a bench, while another becomes a shelter when it rains, or shade when the sun is just too hot to handle.

IBM took ads to a another level by making the ads useful and not just placing ads on already useful things such as benches on parks or at bus stops.