The increased capacity of available technology to provide useful analysis to government work is powerful.  In the past five years, significant advancements have been made in geospatial analytical technology, which allows for the development of new perspectives when considering old problems.  Specifically, advancements in the realm of geospatial technology are providing the opportunity for agencies all over the country to engage in more comprehensive analysis that relies more heavily on technical skills and geospatial data to develop and implement policies which can provide solutions to region-wide issues.

IBM’s Smarter Cities Challenge Report identifies that:

Public sector organizations have access to increasingly sophisticated professionals in areas of information management, analytical modeling/techniques, and analytics tools and technologies. The challenge is to unleash the potential of analytics while managing the velocity (how fast an organization is able to obtain and analyze data), volume, variety and veracity (reliability) of the data. IBM’s business surveys reveal that public sector analytics professionals spend 47% of their time collecting and organizing data, and less than a third of their time on sophisticated analysis.

The system of systems would bring the region advanced integrated geospatial analysis and mapping capabilities.  Applying and integrating analytics with current processes and applications would transform decision-making, enhancing their efficacy.  Geospatial analytics would consolidate and correlate detailed location information with other data points.  The enriching location and geographic feature analysis would transform a partial vision into a holistic view, thereby enabling innovation in economic development and decision-making.   

Data analytics and geospatial analytics taken together would drive:

-Fact-based decision-making

-Deeper program and budget analysis and evaluation

-Better risk management

-Outcomes-based and smarter decisions

IBM’s Smarter Cities Challenge Report also contemplates the potential obstacles that could confront this effort:

The system of systems represents a regional effort to overcome barriers and foster systematic analytics adoption for economic development and decision-making.  In order to realize its vision, the region must address its technical, organization and collaboration challenges:

Leverage open data policies and available data sources.  Simply owning most information is no longer a competitive advantage; innovation is the result of sharing knowledge.  The organization responsible for the data (owner) identifies and maintains the master data sources with their associated security and privacy policies.  The challenge is then to get each owner to commit to data sharing, quality and maintenance, and to immediately address situations that can exacerbate information management tensions and stymie effective action.

In addition to consolidating into one regional geographical information system (GIS), the region must streamline the data capture and cleaning processes and develop a roadmap for long-term integration and sustainability, including enhancement.

The potential analytic and simulation capabilities are discussed in IBM’s Smarter Cities Challenge Report:

This layer also features simulation and “what is” analysis, as well as report generation to perform forecasting based on boundary condition changes.  Big data analytics are a component of this layer, enhancing core capabilities with access and analysis of structured and unstructured information (for example, sentiment analysis).  This layer can answer queries like: “Find the customers who live within the flood zone or within two miles of the boundary” or “What is the tax and infrastructure impact of opening a datacenter in this particular zone?” 

We currently have the technical capacity within our region to answer the first question posited above.  However, when considering the second question about taxes and infrastructure impacts our region’s current technical capacity and data availability does not easily allow consistent analysis and evaluation. Having the ability to do the higher-level analysis contemplated above is crucial to our region moving forward successfully.

IBM’s Smarter Cities Challenge Report emphasizes regional collaboration:

Success of this effort is contingent upon the support and collaborative engagement of the entities represented here, as well as other stakeholders. Collaboration is a key success factor for this effort, and the ability to engage and involve such entities is a precondition for success.

This effort will rely in a large part on the willingness of regional entities to participate in data sharing and collaborative efforts to improve data collection and organization. In a smarter region it is envisioned that all stakeholders will have enhanced access to centralized information through a GIS framework.

I move to approve the IBM’s Smarter Cities Challenge Report identifies that the governing bodies must affirm that:

TMRPA will lead the implementation team, and will develop (in conjunction with DRI) the technical design and data sharing relationships to accomplish advanced geospatial analytics for the region.  Effective implementation requires the collaborative engagement of the entities represented here today, as well as other stakeholders.

And, DRI serves as the technical adviser, complementing TMRPA leadership with valuable competencies and infrastructures in geospatial databases, analytics and advanced visualization.