IBM's smart tech aids water management

Published on July 12, 2013 03:35 by Water Network Research, Official research team of The Water Network in Business

Some of the most compelling, early smart-city strategies are bubbling up inmunicipal and commercial water management. That's partly because budget shortfalls are making it tough to invest in new infrastructure. Yet wastewater runoff and leaky pipes can cost cities thousands of dollars annually, in excess billingor regulatory fines.

The city of South Bend, Ind.,has used the IBM Intelligent Operations Center (IOC) dashboard sincelate 2011 to viewdata pooled from across city agencies.This has reduced wet weather wastewater overflows by 23 percent, and almost entirely eliminated dry-weather incidents such as clogged sewers. Not only did it sidestep $120 million in infrastructure upgrades along the way, but the application is helpingto avoid some$600,000 in potential government fines.

The city of 500,000 used a local IT services company, Emnet, to create and deploy the cloud-hosted tool.

"Anticipating and preventing incidents before they happen is key," said Gary Gilot, member of the South Bend board of public works, when the deal was announced. "Viewing all our aggregated data in real time via the IBM SmartCloud will help us predict where incidents can occur and safeguard our citizens."

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