Melbourne selected for IBM Smarter Cities Challenge Grant


Lord Mayor Robert Doyle said Melbourne has been selected as one of 16 cities chosen for the IBM Smarter Cities Challenge, out of more than 100 international cities to apply.

A team of IBM experts will work with the City of Melbourne on data analysis to help the city make more informed decisions about managing and responding to extreme events.

“We will receive priceless global expertise to work with local leaders to help us improve the way we collect, analyse and act on real-time data about our city,” the Lord Mayor said.

“We need to communicate effectively with all our communities through every means possible. This project will consider how data from all sources can be better incorporated into our emergency response and recovery efforts.”

“This work could help us to improve crowd management during major events such as New Year’s Eve, through to improving safety messaging during extreme events such as heatwaves.”

As part of the pro bono engagement, a team of up to six consultants will spend up to three weeks meeting with organisations, government and businesses to gather a diverse perspective on emergency management and response in Melbourne.

This includes meeting with key stakeholders such as Emergency Management Victoria, 100 Resilient Cities, and the Department of Health and Human Services.

City of Melbourne Chief Executive Officer Ben Rimmer said the City of Melbourne was also selected alongside Detroit and Memphis to receive access to deep analysis of Twitter data.

“Melbourne is one of just three international cities that will be given access to historic and current Twitter data about our city,” Mr Rimmer said.

“To maintain our position as one of the world’s most liveable cities, we must capitalise on new technologies and insights.”

“By refining how we monitor and analyse data from multiple sources we can better harness the power and support of communities during extreme events, and can support communities to build their own resilience.”

For the first time in the history of the program, IBM Watson Analytics will also be used to uncover patterns in Melbourne’s city social media data.

Kerry Purcell, IBM Managing Director Australia and New Zealand congratulated the City of Melbourne saying, “With the help of our experts the City of Melbourne will be able to unlock insights from the vast amounts of data available. This year we will also use our alliance with Twitter to provide a whole new category of data to analyse. The insights discovered will be used to develop personalised solutions for the City of Melbourne to better plan, manage and respond to major events.”

At the conclusion of the engagement, IBM will present a comprehensive set of recommendations to assist the City of Melbourne in planning for extreme events.

The IBM Smarter Cities Challenge was conceived in 2011, with contributions to date valued at over $66 million to 132 cities.

For more information visit http://www.smartercitieschallenge.org/

Visit City of Melbourne