IBM Names Winners of 2013 Smarter Cities Challenge
For year-three of the IBM Smarter Cities Challenge, cities around the world once again competed vigorously to benefit from IBM’s talent and expertise. Thirty-one cities have won grants for 2013. Well before the IBM team arrives for its three-week pro bono consulting engagement valued at US$400,000, the IBMers are already hard at work studying the city’s issue.
The winning cities proposed innovative projects and areas of focus for IBM experts. These included strategies that address:
- Economic and workforce development
- Social services
- Sustainability
- Capital budget planning
- Urban planning
The top 10 winners of this year’s grant awards are:
- Belfast, United Kingdom
- Buffalo, USA
- Burlington, USA
- Cape Town, South Africa
- Chennai, India
- Christchurch, New Zealand
- Copenhagen, Denmark
- Date, Japan
- Faro, Portugal
- Foshan, China
Launched in 2011, the IBM Smarter Cities Challenge is a three-year, 100-city, US$50 million competitive grant program. IBM’s single-largest philanthropic initiative, the program assigns a team of six top IBM experts to each winning city to study a key issue identified by the city’s leadership.
For complete details on the project and the winners, visit www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/39396.wss.
Illustration by renjith krishnan at www.freedigitalphotos.net.
