IBM executives pose at City Hall after
presenting their ideas about building a public security system for
tourists, improving traffic in Pattaya and increasing logistics
potential at Laem Chabang Port.
Vittaya Yoondorn
International Business Machines Corp. executives wrapped up three
weeks in Chonburi, offering both practical and idealistic suggestions on
how to create “smarter” cities and ports to officials in Pattaya and
Laem Chabang.
The five-person team of consultants made their final “IBM Smarter
Cities” presentation to Thai officials Nov. 14 after accumulating and
analyzing information, inspecting city and port systems and reviewing
the role of information technology in running Pattaya and Laem Chabang
Port.
The Smarter Cities Challenge was launched by the IBM Citizenship program
in 2010 to offer the time and expertise of the company’s top experts
from different business units and geographies for three-week
consultations with city leaders to deliver recommendations on how to
make cities smarter and more effective.
Nine of this year’s 33 cities came from Asia, joining 44 others
previously selected globally, including Chiang Mai, where IBM focused
the city on “Smarter Healthcare” and “Smarter Food.”
Team leader Michael Preis, delivery executive for IBM Global Business
Services, said the final report focused on security development, public
safety, traffic management and community issues in Pattaya, and
logistics management and operations at Laem Chabang.
In Pattaya, the consultants’ most practical suggestions centered around
the idea of creating a “security command center” that would use
“predictive analytics” to forecast short- and long-term needs and
prioritize objectives. Predictive analytics encompasses a variety of
statistical techniques from modeling, machine learning, and data mining
that analyze current and historical facts to make predictions about
future events.
Other recommendations include using traffic and public security
information to connect incidents, integrating water-quality, sanitation
and other systems, and more cooperation between the public sector and
private-sector volunteers.
IBM’s ideas for traffic management improvements appear more
philosophical than applicable. Suggestions to improve the land-transport
master plan, strengthen the role of traffic engineers, and adding “an
analytic system allowing the city to have a much deeper information to
use for planning and promotion of law enforcement” are too tied to
macro-government policy and cultural traditions in the workplace to be
applied immediately.
Likewise, the suggestions to make public safety “smarter” are even more
amorphous. The list of recommendations includes “coordinating and urging
agencies and organizations to prepare for emergencies,” “enhancing the
integration and management of crisis and emergency,” and “increasing law
coordination, cooperation and enforcement.”
The public safety section of the report does have a few ideas that can
be acted on quickly, such as building an information center “to merge
daily practice information and use advance data analysis support” and
urging businesses to register employees. Others, however, are vague on
the details, such as the suggestion to “use call centers effectively.”
But when it came to suggestions for a “smarter community,” the IBM
consultants seemed content to throw out more platitudes than concrete.
The final report suggests such ideals as “campaigning for citizens to be
open about other cultures” and “increasing understanding and community
cooperation to improve the image of the city for tourism.”
In Laem Chabang, IBM worked closer to its comfort zone, offering
suggestions on improving worker efficiency, listing port services that
could benefit from technology and analyzing the design of
traffic-management and cargo-handling systems.
The consultants cited the need for port officials to develop a
“blueprint” for architectural modifications at the harbor, implement
“electronic dashboards” and mobile technology to increase efficiency,
and use analytics to better plan to predict cargo-throughput demand.
But when the IBM academics got into the port’s rocky relationship with
its neighbors, the suggestions again leaned more toward platitudes than
plans. The consultants suggested the port draft a “Corporate Social
Responsibilities” document with the community, and give community
leaders more participation in port-expansion plans.
