Minneapolis to Contract with IBM for $2.8M for Smarter City
The ambitious project is made possible by a three-year, $2.8 million agreement with IBM that city officials are preparing to sign next month.
So what is the city buying? A system that will take existing city datasets and
join and visualize that data in new ways to learn more about what’s happening across the city, past and present.
Potential applications?
- Snow plow tracking
- Projecting foreclosures
- Identifying elderly susceptible to extreme heat
- Identifying contractors missing hiring goals on city work
- Mapping snow removal to elderly residents
- Tracking chronic offenders’ geographic restrictions
- Tracking of vicious animals
The graphics have a "dashboard" sort of feel meant for managers. Part of IBM's Smarter Cities efforts, the key to the solution is the Intelligent Operations Platform, the interface into the data. While the article does not mention Esri, it's a partner in the Smarter Cities/Smarter Planet work IBM is doing.
The ACLU and others are concerned about data privacy. I guess before, when the data were not as unified, there were no concerns...
Image via FreeFoto.com licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
