Interviews IBM Takes Aim at Creating a Smarter Planet
Written by Matt Ball Sunday, 13 September 2009 22:57
IBM is working to build a smarter planet, with an aggressive campaign that includes a number of television ads on this topic. The focus is from the micro (making computers run more efficiently) to the macro (designing better transportation networks). The company recently participated in the Forum on Earth Observations III in Washington, D.C., which was organized by the Alliance for Earth Observation and the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies. V1 editor Matt Ball spoke with Richard Lechner, vice president for Energy and Environment at IBM about the company’s role as technology innovator and integrator, and how their tools are being applied to create a smarter planet.
V1: Are you the very first vice president of Earth and Environment at IBM?
Lechner: Yes, but I should clarify that we’ve had a vice president of environmental affairs and a corporate office of environmental affairs for decades now. I have a counterpart inside the company that is responsible for IBM as a Fortune 50 company – handling internal reporting, objective setting and our commitment to the environment. My role is new, and it’s to represent IBM’s capabilities and technologies that help our clients in the various areas of energy, environment and sustainability. We’ve had this portfolio of capabilities for some time now, but I’m really pulling that together and leading the cross-IBM effort since last summer.
V1: You seem to have a very detailed strategy when it comes to addressing sustainability.
Lechner: When we talk about sustainability we focus on energy, carbon and water. We categorize each of these into three broad areas. We have infrastructure, whether data centers and IT equipment, vehicle fleets, buildings or manufacturing systems. Operations, which is everything from supply chain to distribution networks to product development to workforce management. And we also look at the macro systems that comprise the world, whether that be intelligent utility networks or water infrastructure or transportation systems.
We have created those categories and have been developing a robust ecosystem around those. We’re working on energy management with providers within and outside the IT space, to go into a client and be able to deploy energy monitoring, management and optimization across a very wide set of assets. The Green Sigma Coalition is an effort to help companies optimize their efforts for energy, carbon and water in concert with companies like SAP, Johnson Control, Honeywell and the like.
V1: We’re a bit more focused on the macro level, although I appreciate that you have everything from green data centers to these large systems under your umbrella. One element that I’ve been reporting on is the sensor web that’s being deployed in the Hudson River for remediation. Is environmental remediation work under your group as well?
Lechner: Yes, we have a research and innovation group in the area of natural resource management. The Hudson River project that you mention deploys sensors and does analytics to monitor everything from contaminants, to fish populations, to water temperature. For example, a factory might be emitting water back into the Hudson River that has been purified, but the water temperature is also important to the river life. The idea is to manage when the higher temperature water is released into the river for the least amount of impact.
We have similar efforts in Galway Bay in Ireland where we have been working with the Irish government to instrument that bay to monitor for such things as algae blooms and fish populations. We’re also doing some predictive analysis on wave generation capacity, because they have high hopes to use wave power as a renewable energy source.
We have other examples in other parts of the world where we’re deploying sensor arrays and doing the deep analytics that go behind that.
V1: It seems that we’re at an inflection point where we’re taking these ideas and making them a reality. Do you agree that we’re finally at a point where we can effectively harness the technology for the better management of our planet?
Lechner: Yes, and that’s the basic premise behind our Smarter Planet initiative. The time has come where we are instrumented with intelligent devices, and these are connected enough that we can now begin to monitor and change the behavior of these macro systems and of the people that use those systems. It’s not just a matter of the sensors and the connected nature of those, but the ability to do deep analytics with this information that’s important as well.
We believe the capability is here with us now, and so we’re able to make some pretty profound changes in the way everything works now – from water and sewage infrastructure in cities, to rivers and estuaries, to monitoring safety and security of dams, to looking at traffic flow.
V1: When I first heard about the smart planet initiative I believe it was around traffic management in Europe, and I’m wondering whether Europe is far ahead of the world in deploying these smart planet initiatives.
Lechner: We have examples of these smarter planet, instrumented systems, around the world. You’re right that one of our first traffic congestion systems was implemented in Stockholm, Sweden, but we have another very advanced traffic system in Singapore where we’re not only doing traffic monitoring, but we have predictive analysis capability. We can predict where traffic congestions will occur up to an hour in advance with an 85 percent accuracy. Government officials can send signals (whether those are messages on sign boards or to individual GPS devices or pricing signals) to encourage traffic to flow along a different route.
There are examples in Asia where this is occurring, and in the United States. We announced earlier this summer the instrumentation of thousands of miles of sewage system in San Francisco to be able to monitor those assets and to predict where failures will occur. By doing that proactively they prevent sewage emissions into the San Francisco Bay.
V1: IBM acts largely as a technology integrator, is GIS one of the technologies that you implement?
Lechner: We are an integrator, but our role is really to use technology innovation along with our industry insights and our ability to do business process, re-engineering and transformation work along with our deep analytics capabilities. The imagery is important and it manifests itself in such things as our traffic congestion systems. We also have projects in the area of micro weather forecasting with fine-grained (within an 8-block area) detailed weather prediction to suggest to a city where snowfall will occur so that sanding and plowing trucks might be dispatched with greater accuracy and less waste.
V1: I appreciate that you equate sustainability with efficiency as a large part of your message.
Lechner: There absolutely is a strong focus on cost avoidance and cost takeout in this economic climate. Sustainability and energy efficiency drive cost reduction. Many clients are finding that by optimizing their operations for energy, carbon and water they’re realizing other operational benefits beyond simply the energy savings. We’re gaining layers of value from focusing on green.
We’re also finding that worldwide there are a growing number of local and federal agencies that are offering energy efficiency savings to businesses. That just adds value to the client. The stimulus programs that are now in place around the world are targeting infrastructure and looking to create green collar jobs, and that’s acting as an accelerator for these kinds of projects.
V1: Have you seen great interest in the projects that you’re involved in?
Lechner: We’ve seen no slowdown in terms of clients interest in efficiency projects, whether it be in IT, buildings or other systems. We’re seeing significant interest in things like smart grid projects, a great interest in intelligent buildings and more energy efficient buildings. The work that we announced in Ireland in Galway Bay, as well as the work we’re doing in San Francisco, have generated a great deal of interest from cities around the world.
V1: In Europe there’s a carbon cap and trade in place that’s leading to different ways of doing business, particularly for large emitters. There’s pending legislation here that now rests with the Senate. Will legislation significantly change how your clients do business, and utilize your services?
Lechner: There are already 59 countries and jurisdictions that are in the process of putting in place carbon management and monetization systems. For example here in the U.S. there’s national legislation pending, but we already have three regional greenhouse gas emission programs. There’s the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (REGI) in the northeast, there’s Assembly Bill (AB) 42 in California, there’s a Midwest consortium, and there’s one emerging in the Southeast. If you look in the UK there’s the Carbon Reduction Emissions Act that goes into effect in the Spring of 2010. That will impact 3,000 businesses across the United Kingdom.
This isn’t any longer something that is relevant to only the very largest emitters – utility companies, cement factories and the like. This is relevant to businesses of all sizes and in every industry. We are definitely seeing an interest from clients in terms of putting in place sustainability agendas, and helping them define a strategy and put in place a baseline for where they are today, and then looking at strategies to reduce emissions and energy use across the whole business.
V1: Is the Green Sigma Program tightly tied to responding to carbon caps?
Lechner: Green Sigma is all about optimizing operations. It will absolutely help businesses respond and reply to new government regulations, but it’s primarily being adopted now as a way to cut costs. It’s not just pending legislation that is moving people, it’s very much the cost benefits.
Many companies are also realizing that their customers, board members and employees are demanding that they have a sustainability agenda. That’s also driving interest in this area.
V1: There are some interesting legislative initiatives in Europe, such as noise pollution ordinances, that go far beyond the stewardship of our planet and into areas of quality of life.
Lechner: We have pilot projects going on now with universities using GPS signals from cell phones to monitor routes taken by bicycle commuters in cities such as Los Angeles. We’re looking at bicycle routes along with traffic and air quality along the route to suggest routes with less of a chance of a collision with vehicles and with better air quality. That speaks to better quality of life in ways that might be surprising to people who may think about this as just a carbon emissions or waste emissions issue.
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