City of Lisbon, Portugal and IBM Demonstrate Use of Smarter Cities Technology To Enhance Emergency Preparedness

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Sep 05, 2013, 09:30 ET

LISBON, Portugal, Sept. 5, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced a partnership with Lisbon City Hall and Lisbon Fire Brigade (RSB) to demonstrate the city's ability to anticipate problems and minimize the impact of potential disruptions to city services.

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The City of Lisbon is working with IBM to better manage and improve general city operations. As part of the project, Big Data will be aggregated across multiple city departments and agencies, then analyzed and shared in real time, with a special focus on emergency management. The results of the project are expected to help the city mitigate risks from essential service disruptions such as the loss of electricity, water and telephone service, provide better services to citizens in times of crisis, and improve overall responsiveness and coordination among city agencies.

"The city of Lisbon recently marked the 25th anniversary of a major urban fire that damaged the Portuguese capitol city," said the Mayor of Lisbon, Antonio Costa. "This historic fire was a turning point for our city, making security, disaster and incident prevention our priority. To prevent something like this from happening again, city leaders are investing in technology and innovation and working to improve efficiency of city operations. That's why I consider this collaboration with IBM critical to the functioning of the city of Lisbon."

City leaders and IBM are focused on improving local information systems, standard operating procedures, and emergency operations to ensure the city has the appropriate services, facilities and communications tools to protect citizens and the city's infrastructure. The City expects the project will help develop a new emergency services paradigm for urban areas that can be applied in Lisbon, but also in cities around the world.

"This innovative project focused on safety and overall emergency management is a bold example of the city's leadership and vision, and their willingness to ensure the future of their citizens," said Antonio Raposo de Lima, IBM Portugal General Manager. "Lisbon is creating the foundation for a Smarter City, harnessing Big Data, analytics and cloud computing to alleviate many of the issues common to growing cities today."

Other companies involved in new emergency preparedness programs with the City of Lisbon are the energy, water, gas and telephone utilities, EDP, LISBOAGAS, EPAL and Vodafone, as well Whispir (mass notification), Faltcom (vehicle monitoring), UnifiedEdge (radio channel integration), Stampstar (alarm system monitoring), MobilityNow (monitoring people at risk) and IBM Business Partner ESRI Portugal (geographic maps information).

IBM is helping cities around the world use the vast amount of information already available to deliver more efficient citizen services. IBM's experience with cities continuously fuels more effective solutions and establishes best practices to help city leaders safely and efficiently transform their communities.

About IBM

For more information on IBM Smarter Cities, visit www.ibm.com/press/smartercities.

Contacts:

Holli Haswell
720-396-5485
[email protected]

Rita Miguel
351-21-8927-810
[email protected]

SOURCE IBM