IBM Joins Hands With Chinese Government To Tackle Smog
IBM Joins Hands With Chinese Government To Tackle Smog
When known industrial giants and companies join up with public sector organizations and governments for healing the environmental, positive results ensue. This is because private sector companies have the resources and acumen to help combat global warming and climate change.
The latest company to do this is IBM Corp which has signed an agreement with Beijing city for the use of advanced weather forecasting and cloud computing technologies to block smog in China. Following a series of pollution scandals and skyrocketing global warming levels, the Chinese government has decided to reverse the damage done to the sky, soil and rivers of the country due to more than 3 decades of growth.
Beijing is already using an alerting system from data gained from 35 monitoring stations. This enables it to shut schools as well as factories and cut traffic 3 days in advance. Residents are of the view that much more needs to be done.
Even experts point to the need for more action on this score. Ma Jun, the director of the Institute of Environmental and Public Affairs which is a NGO working to improve emissions data transparency has indicated that “predicting is helpful because it helps prevent exposure, but it is not enough if it is only about knowing which days to put on masks or stay indoors”.
As per the agreement with IBM, Beijing's government is one of the partners in the tech group's China focused 10 year “Green Horizon” initiative that aims to channel IBM's forecasting experience for gaining real-time emissions data to predict smog build-ups.
IBM will help cities to improve management based on Big Data and predict pollution with accuracy for ensuring the government can take proactive action, according to Xiaowei Shen who is the China director of IBM Research. He spoke at the IBM's lab in Beijing's northwest Zhongguancun district known for its technology.
China's commitment to reducing the share of coal in its energy mix is reiterated through this partnership. IBM's cloud-based analytic systems can be tailored to make efficient use of renewable energy, according to Shen.
At the Zhangbei wind and solar project run by the State Grid Corp in northern Hebei province, the supply and demand management system from IBM has led to the reduction of wasted power to 20% from 30%. Data is needed to combat pollution and engage in effective action, according to Wang Tao, resident scholar of the energy and climate change programme at Carnegie Tsinghua Centre for Global Policy
Important questions such as how to stop vehicular or industrial pollution can be easily answered through the use of such data. This is a very good case of private companies taking up environmental initiatives to be part of the solution and not the problem, for combating climate change and global warming.
