Smarter Planet – a key initiative of IBM has helped the company take technology and processes from one field and applied in another to innovative results says Vanitha Narayanan of IBM India

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Presenting an example, Narayanan spoke of IBM’s work on the Smarter Rio Initiative to bring the resources together and make it a smarter city in time for the FIFA World Cup and the Olympics. All city services were brought together and integrated, processes were changed in terms of decision making, command-in- control and handing things at the right time so that the result would show better citizenship and emergency services. Being a low lying area prone to floods and mudslides, the platform helped use data to make better decisions by improving emergency management and weather prediction. However, in India cities are not empowered and have many chains of command that means you can work on small micro-segments of addressing the issue. Looking ahead, Narayanan believes that with rapid urbanization, nothing prevents the formation of smarter cities all over India.