Comments on: Solving Scarce Resource Problems through Innovative IT

By: Melanie Mulhall

Melanie Mulhall — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:22:17 +0000

Andrea,

The project in Ireland makes me proud of my Irish heritage! But beyond the concept of scarce material resources, it seems to me that these ideas could be applied by those of us who sell services. I’m going to give that some thought.

Melanie

By: Claire Walter

Claire Walter — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:12:22 +0000

Clean water (and to an extent, clean air) will help alleviate many health problems in the world. Good for IBM and others for putting some of their considerable corporate brainpower into such efforts.

By: Andrea Meyer

Andrea Meyer — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:45:44 +0000

Thanks, Larry. (You're very observant - I used to work at IBM way back when, so I perhaps I'm a bit partial to them. :-) ) Despite that, I do think they're doing good things in numerous areas. To your question, IBM recently sponsored brainstorming sessions with hundreds of experts from universities, industry, and government to share ideas about managing water. They've got a "smarter water" blog going that reports on initiatives around the world and what IBM is doing. IBM also clearly has a business interest in this topic: they see a solid opportunity in helping people better produce, distribution, management, and recycle water through the the company's SWIM (Strategic Water Information Management) platform.

By: Lawrence Berezin

Lawrence Berezin — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:14:41 +0000

Andrea,

Great post as usual. As one of your regular readers, I observe that you refer to IBM as a sort of gold standard on many of the topics your discuss. Does IBM collaborate with other corporations on the water scarcity challenge?

Love your blog!

By: Andrea Meyer

Andrea Meyer — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:06:23 +0000

Thank you, Gregory, for your point about innovative mechanisms that make patterns of consumption more intelligent. Indeed, companies can use IT systems to make improvements in how their own companies use water. Operational dashboards, asset lifecycle management, constraint-based optimization, and rich visualization technology are all tools companies can use to better distribute, manage and utilize a scarce resource like water.