Greentech Lead Asia: The National Environment Agency
(NEA), a public organization responsible for improving and sustaining a
clean and green environment in Singapore, has entered into three-year
research collaboration and a Joint Development Agreement (JDA) with IBM.
These agreements allow IBM researchers
to work with NEA to develop advanced modeling and predictive capabilities to
address key environmental concerns in Singapore such as air quality, extreme
weather events, dengue outbreaks and food poisoning incidents.
“We hope that the collaboration will lead to new
systems that can help highly compact and dense cities like Singapore better
manage their environmental challenges. Such solutions will not only be relevant
to Singapore but other cities around the world,” said Andrew Tan, chief
executive officer of the NEA.
The collaboration will enable researchers from NEA and
IBM’s mathematical experts to harness the wide capabilities of advanced
analytics including the ability to capture data in real time and turn this
unstructured information into intelligence, or even predictive insight that
facilitates smarter decisions. By enabling accurate forecasting, proactive
measures can be taken to prevent unwanted events instead of simply reacting to
events as they occur.
Leveraging real-time environmental data from NEA’s
environmental sensor networks, the predictive environmental capabilities to be
developed under the collaboration will help NEA officers to take timely and
effective action to mitigate environmental pollution and public health risks.
“Our collaboration will bring researchers from IBM
together with NEA to apply advanced analytics to real-life issues. In turn,
this will allow NEA to develop practical and innovative solutions for
sustainable growth, making Singapore a role model for smarter and sustainable
urban systems,” said Janet Ang, managing director of IBM Singapore.
NEA and IBM also seek to engage with other public
agencies and research ecosystem – to add to the vibrancy of the research
community that is engaged in creating innovative leading-edge solutions ready
to be tested and deployed, testing them locally, and deploying them worldwide.
IBM saves more than $43 million in electricity expenses
Last year, IBM saved more than $43 million inelectricity
expenses and conserved 378,000 MW hours of electricity, enough to power almost
34,000 average U.S. homes for a year. IBM’s energy conservation projects
delivered savings equal to 7.4 percent of the company’s total energy use,
exceeding the annual goal of 3.5 percent.