IBM analysts work to make Melbourne a smarter city

A team of IBM international analysts is in Melbourne working to ensure the city is adequately equipped to deal with disruptive events and emergencies.

Melbourne is one of 16 cities selected to take part in the IBM Smarter Cities challenges. The IBM team of six arrived on Monday and will spend the next three weeks analysing the city and formulating recommendations to minimise the adverse impact of disruptive events.

The analysts are equipped with new technology and will be given access to the systems that keep the city running.

The team will liaise with government and public sector agencies including Emergency Management Victoria, PTV and the Department of Health and Human Services to learn how the city responds to emergencies and long-term disruptive events.

IBM’s Watson Analytics platform will also be used to uncover patterns in Melbourne’s city data, and the City of Melbourne will receive a special grant of Twitter data about the city to support the project.

“This is an invaluable opportunity for Melbourne, which is rapidly growing to become Australia’s largest city. We will have to respond to growth and disruption in smart and nimble ways through more intuitive technology,” Melbourne’s Lord Mayor Robert Doyle said.

“An example of the type of solutions the team might provide is how the city will respond to an important, major infrastructure project — one that is necessary but also disruptive: Melbourne Metro [a project to build a twin rail tunnel from South Kensington railway station to South Yarra] is such a project.”

Image courtesy of Peter Mackey under CC