IBM today announced the IBM Intelligent Operations Center for Smarter Cities , a new solution designed to help cities of all sizes gain a holistic view of information across city departments and agencies, including law enforcement. By infusing analytical insights into municipal operations through one central point of command, cities will be able to better anticipate problems, respond to crises, and manage resources.

Through this solution, IBM provides real-time analytical solutions that enable public safety professionals to reduce crime, protect first responders and improve citizen services while preserving government budget resources. Local, state, federal and non-government authorities can harness the intelligence derived from sensors, crime data bases, cameras and integrated communications to make smarter, more timely decisions. For example, IBM's video analysis software working with the Intelligent Operations Center for Smarter Cities can instantly detect and respond to physical security threats.

"All cities are made up of a complex system of systems that are all inextricably linked. The Intelligent Operations Center for Smarter Cities recognizes the behavior of the city as a whole, thus providing more coordinated and timely decision-making based on deep insights into how each city system will react to a given situation," said Anne Altman, general manager for Global Public Sector at IBM. "With more than 2,000 smarter cities engagements worldwide, we are now applying best practices and solutions that can be scaled to cities of all sizes around the globe."

Through a unified operations center, cities will be able to:

• Accurately gather, analyze and act on information about city systems and services, including public safety, transportation, water, buildings, social services and agencies.

• Analyze real-time information to better model and anticipate problems to minimize the impact of disruptions to citizens.

• Integrate real-time information from across multiple city systems to enable collaborative decision making for rapid response to events and incidents.

The Intelligent Operations Center for Smarter Cities combines patented analytics technologies, created by IBM Research in collaboration with cities around the world, as well as leading edge technologies acquired in recent acquisitions.

The Intelligent Operations Center for Smarter Cities can be extended to help support a wide range of integration projects across the city or within agencies and departments. City leaders can adopt service solutions from IBM or IBM Partners, that integrate city management of services such as public safety, transportation, water, building and energy management with the Intelligent Operation Center.

The design of the Intelligent Operations Center for Smarter Cities makes it easy to build, reuse and add advanced capabilities that can provide the full breadth of citizen services to cities around the world. Smarter Cities solutions created from existing assets have a significantly higher gross profit than those built from scratch -- meaning cost savings passed onto the customer. At the same time, customers receive software with hardened components that have already proved themselves in the real world.

IBM is establishing a community of Business Partners committed to developing complementary solutions with expertise in areas such as architecture and water management, devices including video cameras and smart meters, and city services software. Among the Business Partners working with IBM are: AECOM, Badger Meter, Esri, Veolia and VirtualAgility.

For more information about IBM Smarter Cities, please visit www.ibm.com/smartercities .

Read a blog post about how the IBM IOC benefits law enforcement .