Beijing Government Applies IBM's Cloud Computing To Solve Smog Problem

The Beijing municipal government has reached a cooperation agreement with IBM to use the tech company's advanced weather forecast and cloud computing technologies to solve the stubborn smog problem in the city.

Facing serious environmental pollution problems, the Chinese government has promised citizens that it will take measures to improve the environmental situation. To handle the haze and pollution problems, it is necessary to enhance data collection and monitoring and forecast abilities. Beijing has reportedly established an early warning system with data from 35 monitoring stations and the system can warn about heavily polluted weather three days in advance and adjust traffic volume accordingly.

Under the agreement signed by the two parties, the Beijing municipal government will become an partner of IBM's ten-year Green Horizon project, targeting the Chinese market. This project aims to use IBM's forecast and data collection abilities to predict the occurrence of smog.

Meanwhile, because of China's promise to reduce the proportion of coal power generation, IBM's cloud computing analysis system will make optimizations and adjustments targeting renewable energy sources. State Grid's wind and solar energy demonstration project in Zhangbei, Hebei province, shows that IBM's supply and demand management system will be able to reduce energy waste rates from 30% to 20%.

In addition, IBM said that the Green Horizon project will bring new business opportunities to China's pollution control and renewable energy source sectors. Financial terms of the cooperation were not immediately available.

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1. By Grief – July 14th, 2014 at 4:00 am

   Cloud computing to predict and control smog – really! Words, this will never be more than words. The solution is to close 80% of their manufacturing, most of their coal burning plants, get 60% of their cars off the roads and force the installation of catalytic converters and disperse the population to those ghost cities all that industry has created to maintain a high employment standard. Nothing else will work. But that will mean firing millions of people, creating welfare state to cater to basic needs, emptying their overpopulated cities and abandoning cars for bicycles. This in an environment were natural resources have been stripped, agricultural output drastically reduced, rivers and aquefers dried up, massive deforestation….

   China has nothing left but people and their demands on whats left of a badly used and mismanaged environment – aphyxiating slowly on their own greed.

2. By Denial – July 14th, 2014 at 4:28 am

   Yes – lets add more industry to an already over industrialized country so instead of making important sacrifices and taking real action lets repackage the problem into a virtual reality further obscured by a halo effect of some prognostive prestidigitation….. one might smirk at the smoke and mirrors effect. China doesn't have 10 years and its besotted skies won't easily clear by turning to wind and solar. China wants only one thing – PROFIT.

   North America will inherit that pollution as it drifts over the Pacific; it should be building a legal case for collectively suing China and launching a massive class-action law suite once those smog clouds begin to choke other, cleaner skies. Alternatively, North America, Common Wealth Nations, Europe and Russia should, righth now, stop buying Chinese products. First World nations will have to retool their manufacturing plants, employ their youth, kick start their flagging economies.

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