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November 15, 2012
IBM Announces 2013 Smarter Cities Challenge Grants Winners
Photo: In Palisades, NY, Stanley Litow (left), IBM’s VP of Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs, names recipients of Smarter Cities Challenge grants at the IBM Smarter Cities Challenge Summit. (left to right) Winning mayors include: Mayor Miro Weinberger, Burlington, Vermont; Mayor Jose Fortunati of Porto Alegre, Brazil, The Right Honourable the Lord Mayor Alderman Gavin Robinson, Belfast, UK; Mayor Madeline Rogero, Knoxville, Tennessee; and Mayor Dwight Jones, Richmond, Virginia. IBM’s largest philanthropic initiative, the IBM Smarter Cities Challenge is a three-year, 100-city, US$50 million competitive grant program that assigns teams of IBM experts to winning cities to analyze key issues. (Source: IBM).
Photo: Cities are Reaching their Limit Infographic (Credit: IBM)
Photo: Representatives from IBM and Singapore Economic Development celebrate the opening of the IBM Supply Chain Analytics Center of Competency. (Credit: IBM)
• IBM today named 31 cities globally as recipients of IBM’s Smarter Cities Challenge grants for 2013.
Launched in 2011, the IBM Smarter Cities Challenge is a three-year, 100-city, US$50 million competitive grant program. The program assigns a team of six top IBM experts to each winning city to study a key issue identified by the city’s leadership.
IBM teams work with city officials to analyze data, soliciting the input of dozens of local agencies and advocacy groups. IBM then provides detailed recommendations for how the city can efficiently and effectively address the issue.
The grant recipients are being announced at an invitation-only summit bringing mayors and city leaders together with experts and urban policy leaders. Mayors in attendance include those from among cities that were previously awarded Smarter Cities Challenge grants, as well as those whose cities are today being named 2013 winners.
IBM said that at the summit, mayors will share successful strategies on topics ranging from transportation and economic development, to sustainability and citizen participation. They will review innovative solutions to the major challenges facing cities today, such as identifying financing, refining operating strategies, improving productivity, driving organizational change, and using data and technology effectively.
Following are the 31 cities that have won IBM Smarter Cities Challenge grants for 2013:
• Belfast, United Kingdom
• Buffalo, USA
• Burlington, USA
• Cape Town, South Africa
• Chennai, India
• Christchurch, New Zealand
• Copenhagen, Denmark
• Date, Japan
• Faro, Portugal
• Foshan, China
• Fresno, USA
• Gurgaon, India
• Jeju, Korea
• Khon Kaen, Thailand
• Knoxville, USA
• Kyoto, Japan
• Lagos, Nigeria
• Lodz, Poland
• Makati City, Philippines
• Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia
• Pingtung County, Taiwan
• Porto Alegre, Brazil
• Quebec City, Canada
• Reno, USA
• Richmond, USA
• Stavanger, Norway
• Trujillo, Peru
• Tucson, USA
• Valparaiso, Chile
• Vitoria, Brazil
• Waterloo, Canada
According to IBM, in year-one and two of the Smarter Cities Challenge, IBM completed work in more than 60 cities globally, deploying nearly 400 of its most talented experts who delivered concrete and measurable results to winning cities.
Smarter Cities Challenge is a variant of IBM’s Corporate Service Corps, a pro bono consulting program that assists governments with projects that intersect business, technology, and society. Since its launch in 2008, Corporate Service Corps has sent more than 2,000 of IBM’s top talent based in 50 countries on more than 200 team assignments in 30 countries. While Corporate Service Corps focuses on the developing world, IBM’s Smarter Cities Challenge addresses urban concerns in both industrialized and developing countries, IBM elucidated.
|GlobalGiants.Com|
Edited & Posted by the Editor | 12:43 PM | Link to this Post
