Traffic at the intersection of sensor data and social media

<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">Dublin has one of the most advanced intelligent traffic systems in Europe. The city is full of sensors at its intersections (induction loops counting cars, remotely controlled traffic lights, and traffic cameras) and on its bus fleet equipped with on-board satellite positioning units, all streaming data in real-time. Now, it is turning to crowdsourcing. The city is plugging social media data into its <span style="color: #5b9bd5;"><a href="http://www.insight-ict.eu/">INSIGHT System</a></span>, powered by research done at <span style="color: #5b9bd5;"><a href="http://www.research.ibm.com/labs/ireland/">IBM Research-Ireland</a></span>. Two technologies <span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif;">use data from the commuting public to help urban traffic controllers get a better view of city roads to more-quickly respond to incidents, and issue alerts, thereby improving the accuracy of the Insight system and the availability of traffic alerts for Dubliners.</span></span></span><br /><br /><a name="more"></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPEZYYmJlcsPzrsWq8rqNJSZSvUq49nthIcOd6z4P0HEDgcw2pKNafU89uFs4z3PWtCuOfSGPEHURwTKDVIckCTQG67IljHfDMxy9HrBS_7DozXq0uhNKykBfIdTJlbVZusfE9YKDnGV1m/s1600/jakubmaracek.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPEZYYmJlcsPzrsWq8rqNJSZSvUq49nthIcOd6z4P0HEDgcw2pKNafU89uFs4z3PWtCuOfSGPEHURwTKDVIckCTQG67IljHfDMxy9HrBS_7DozXq0uhNKykBfIdTJlbVZusfE9YKDnGV1m/s1600/jakubmaracek.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jakub Marecek</td></tr></tbody></table><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">As IBM Research-Ireland’s <span style="color: #5b9bd5;"><a href="http://researcher.ibm.com/researcher/view.php?person=ie-jakub.marecek">Jakub Marecek</a></span> and his numerous co-authors from the INSIGHT project explain in their paper <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #5b9bd5;"><a href="https://www.iit.demokritos.gr/sites/default/files/artikis-edbt14.pdf">Heterogeneous Stream Processing and Crowdsourcing for Urban Traffic Management</a></span></i>, at the International Conference on <span style="color: #5b9bd5;"><a href="http://www.edbt.org/">Extending Database Technology</a></span></span><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: NimbusSanL-Bold; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">, </span><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">crowdsourcing is as a tool for resolving ambiguity in intelligent transport systems. </span><br /><br /><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">"It </span><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: CMR9;">queries volunteers close to the sensors that disagree (with reports) and estimates what has actually happened, considering the reliability of participants' responses so far. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: CMR9;">“The benefits of this approach are two-fold. First, more-accurate information is given directly to end users. Second, the complex event processing component of our system makes use of the crowdsourced information to minimise the use of unreliable sources. The traffic modelling component may also use the crowdsourced information to resolve data sparsity.”</span><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric;"><br /></div><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2iy5DLPJAkw" width="420"></iframe><br /><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">Alerting the crowd</span></b><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">One part of the system is the <span style="color: #5b9bd5;"><a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=gr.aueb.boutsis.crowdalert.app">CrowdAlert app</a></span>, which ask its users for voluntary confirmation of traffic incidents and additional information. The </span></span><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">free Android app is available on Google Play. When an unusual event, such as a major slow-down, is observed in the induction loops and bus position traces, the users are alerted and, if nearby, are asked for their impression of the causes. In return, the users see a variety of alerts and traffic data on a map-based interface. The Dublin City Council, which manages the system, may also ask users further questions and offer award, such as parking credits for the answers. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">“The CrowdAlert app is city agnostic so it can be used in any city. However, the server handling the data for the application would need to be adapted depending on the types of sensors used in that city,” Jakub said. Warsaw, Poland is now considering a CrowdAlert deployment.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric;"><br /></div><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hYcxPmHh_CA" width="560"></iframe><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 105%;"><br />Crowdsourced tweets on the radio</span></b><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 105%;"></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;"><br /></span></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: helvneue light for ibm,sans-serif;">A prize-winning paper in Association for Computing Machinery Recommender Systems Conference</span></span>, <a href="http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2799673"><i><span style="color: #5b9bd5;">Crowd Sourcing, with a Few Answers: Recommending Commuters for Traffic Updates</span></i>,</a></span></span><span lang="EN-IE" style="color: #5b9bd5; font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></i></b><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">by IBM Research-Ireland's <span style="color: #5b9bd5;"><a href="http://researcher.ibm.com/researcher/view.php?person=ie-elizabeth.daly">Elizabeth Daly</a></span> and <span style="color: #5b9bd5;"><a href="http://researcher.ibm.com/researcher/view.php?person=ie-MBERLING">Michele Berlingerio</a></span>, and their colleague <span style="color: #5b9bd5;"><a href="https://sites.google.com/site/francoisschnitzler/home">Francois Schnitzler</a></span>, Senior Researcher at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, details an algorithm that predicts the best Twitter users to follow or query about traffic in Dublin.</span><br /><br /><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">It crowdsources traffic updates </span><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: NimbusRomNo9L-Regu;">based on user engagement level and reputation, which combines the time, and mobility profile of the user; the time of day and locations the user typically communicates about; and the number of queries previously directed at the user. The team evaluated this proposed strategy using a collection of user contributed tweets and live traffic updates from Dublin City Council’s </span><span lang="EN-IE" style="color: #5b9bd5; font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;"><a href="http://dublincityfm.ie/"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: NimbusRomNo9L-Regu;">Dublin City FM</span></a> </span><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: NimbusRomNo9L-Regu;">radio station <span style="color: #5b9bd5;">@</span></span><span lang="EN-IE" style="color: #5b9bd5; font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;"><a href="https://twitter.com/LiveDrive" target="_blank"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: NimbusRomNo9L-Regu;">LiveDrive</span></a></span><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: NimbusRomNo9L-Regu;"> account</span><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">.</span><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: NimbusRomNo9L-Regu;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: NimbusRomNo9L-Regu;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: NimbusRomNo9L-Regu;">The station's DJ broadcasts LiveDrive tweet updates during morning and evening peak traffic times, after a producer monitors incoming alerts, and a camera controller, who has access to a number of the traffic cameras in the city, clarifies reported issues.</span> </span></span><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: NimbusRomNo9L-Regu;">Listeners are incentivised to provide real-time updates, via their own Twitter accounts to the station, with the possibility of receiving free parking vouchers, or a song request – not to mention, the general understanding that if they contribute useful information that benefits others, they too may benefit from the contributions of others.</span><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;"> </span><br /><br /><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">Using the LiveDrive tweets as the gold standard for other tweets, the researchers were able to build and analyse the reputation of other users who tweeted about traffic. They collected almost 40,000 tweets originating from and directed to the LiveDrive account by almost 2,200 accounts from October 2012 until February 2014.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><div dir="ltr" lang="en">There has been an incident on Nassau St at the junction of Dawson St. Nassau St is blocked and the left turn from Dawson St is also blocked.</div>— Live Drive (@LiveDrive) <a href="https://twitter.com/LiveDrive/status/434222094147411968">February 14, 2014</a></blockquote><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWsrKKUqhUUntGuFExtDqNfzCET9YLs7zPdjQ9ccEWQnBtQuYg1xMLTcSy7lLbaW3rUuKKILwH_JEJKM-rwf_q2sKs2AUIJVbQIg5oIcHuFH9ofre2b-ZEoxDfehwSk5BuCC3kEo2iWOOU/s1600/edaly.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWsrKKUqhUUntGuFExtDqNfzCET9YLs7zPdjQ9ccEWQnBtQuYg1xMLTcSy7lLbaW3rUuKKILwH_JEJKM-rwf_q2sKs2AUIJVbQIg5oIcHuFH9ofre2b-ZEoxDfehwSk5BuCC3kEo2iWOOU/s1600/edaly.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Elizabeth Daly</td></tr></tbody></table><script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">“We were amazed by the participatory model set up by the radio, which involves user by both broadcasting tweets about traffic, and by receiving alerts from them,” said Elizabeth. </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">“We then wondered: what if LiveDrive had a way to directly contact people using Twitter and ask them about updates on traffic and accidents?” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">The researchers were able to accurately predict which Twitter user was most appropriate to provide information, depending on the time of day and location of interest. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-outline-level: 1;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt;">“The work is in an experimental stage but speaking to the LiveDrive team they expressed interest in understanding the reputation of the users contributing updates saying some users ‘</span><span style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">are very loyal contributors and we really know we can trust their content. Having a way to see an indication of history of the person contributing the update would really make that easier.” wrote Elizabeth in her paper </span><i><b><span lang="EN-IE" style="color: #5b9bd5; font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-IE; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><a href="http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2449423&cm_mc_uid=13896970384214436222099&cm_mc_sid_50200000=1444117961"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Westland Row why so slow?: fusing social media and linked data sources for understanding real-time traffic conditions</span></span>.</a></span></b></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 105%;">IBM’s partnership with the Dublin City Council shows that Twitter data and crowdsourcing can successfully add commuters’ voices to the city’s transportation systems. Traffic managers will know about incidents sooner so they can provide commuters with realistic alternative routes and more accurate travel times. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: ideograph-numeric;"><br /></div>

crowdsource ibm research - Ireland smarter cities transportation Traffic at the intersection of sensor data and social media

Dublin has one of the most advanced intelligent traffic systems in Europe. The city is full of sensors at its intersections (induction loops...

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Helping customers before they call

<br /><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkpC29mK3Ln3TCSeig_e69ZcTVonIFw4iM-5pju3lGmrKPKkyflG8yC6MG-9mFoQDOMH8jDDxslaQMTu9nZKpWQOnY3YEjKVRitChBYbLAHH5VNgTMRokStudZzEtR2hdiPV1LM-ukUt2v/s1600/fcalabrese.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkpC29mK3Ln3TCSeig_e69ZcTVonIFw4iM-5pju3lGmrKPKkyflG8yC6MG-9mFoQDOMH8jDDxslaQMTu9nZKpWQOnY3YEjKVRitChBYbLAHH5VNgTMRokStudZzEtR2hdiPV1LM-ukUt2v/s1600/fcalabrese.jpg" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%;">by <a href="http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/view.php?person=ie-FCALABRE">Francesco Calabrese</a>, manager of Smarter Urban Dynamics, IBM Research-Ireland</span><span style="font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%;">As our smartphones get smarter, we’re using more Over-The-Top applications like WhatsApp, Viber or Skype, rather than our telco provider’s voice, and text. This downward trend means shrinking income for the telco, even though it’s estimated that data usage will grow beyond 20 exabytes per month in the coming years. When my team of social, mobile and decision theory researchers at IBM’s lab in Dublin noticed this OTT trend, we wanted to know, in broader terms: could we measure and predict the quality of a customer’s experience on a telco network in real time?</span></div><a name="more"></a><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"></div><table align="right" border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoNormalTable" style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none; margin-left: 6.75pt; margin-right: 6.75pt; mso-border-alt: solid white .5pt; mso-border-insideh: .5pt solid white; mso-border-insidev: .5pt solid white; mso-padding-alt: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-table-anchor-horizontal: margin; mso-table-anchor-vertical: paragraph; mso-table-left: right; mso-table-lspace: 9.0pt; mso-table-overlap: never; mso-table-rspace: 9.0pt; mso-table-top: 2.9pt; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184;"> <tbody><tr style="mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-irow: 0; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;"> <td style="border: solid white 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid white .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 2.25in;" valign="top" width="216"><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-element-anchor-horizontal: margin; mso-element-anchor-vertical: paragraph; mso-element-frame-hspace: 9.0pt; mso-element-left: right; mso-element-top: 2.9pt; mso-element-wrap: around; mso-element: frame; mso-height-rule: exactly;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Tms Rmn"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IE;">Telcos need to deepen their customer knowledge through smarter capabilities such as predictive analytics.</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-element-anchor-horizontal: margin; mso-element-anchor-vertical: paragraph; mso-element-frame-hspace: 9.0pt; mso-element-left: right; mso-element-top: 2.9pt; mso-element-wrap: around; mso-element: frame; mso-height-rule: exactly;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-element-anchor-horizontal: margin; mso-element-anchor-vertical: paragraph; mso-element-frame-hspace: 9.0pt; mso-element-left: right; mso-element-top: 2.9pt; mso-element-wrap: around; mso-element: frame; mso-height-rule: exactly;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Tms Rmn"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IE;">– IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) study, <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/thoughtleadership/restoringconnections/">Restoring Connections</a></span></span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></span></div></td> </tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">And we may have found the answer in predictive analytics. Our recent </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ArXiv</i><span style="font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">paper, </span><span style="color: #0000ee;"><span style="font-size: 17.3333339691162px; line-height: 18.546667098999px;"><u><a href="http://arxiv.org/pdf/1508.02884v1.pdf" target="_blank">Towards Real-time Customer Experience Prediction for Telec<span id="goog_1439388196"></span><span id="goog_1439388197"></span>ommunication Operators</a></u></span></span><span style="font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">, tells an interesting story of telcos’ inability to anticipate customer problems. If telcos could predict issues in real time, they could then serve their customers more efficiently by anticipating problems and implementing fixes before a customer calls with an issue. The good news is that our study found that telcos have the data necessary to help – and keep – their customers. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%;">So, we devised a way for a telco’s system to understand a bad customer experience so it could examine, and anticipate customer usage. This, in turn, would give the telco a chance to intervene in real time, in what the system considered a potentially bad experience in an automated way, such as a text to customers, or to send operators out to fix a technical issue. For telcos, this predictive analysis could not only mean improved customer satisfaction and reduced help calls, but less customer churn, and a better <a href="http://www.netpromoter.com/why-net-promoter/know">Net Promoter Score</a> – a telco’s customer experience grade.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Piloting through a forest of data</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We partnered with a major South African telco to test our ideas on some real, but historical and anonymized, data. They provided a data set of app usage, which we plugged into a big data architecture of network analysis, and machine learning software. We used the IBM <a href="http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/now-factory/">Now Factory</a> network analytics “feed probe” to collect the data and push it into <a href="http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/infosphere/hadoop/enterprise.html">Big Insights</a>’</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-IE;"> </span><span style="font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%;">machine learning algorithms. This allowed us to generate models of contextual relationships within the data. And then we used <a href="http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/infosphere-streams">InfoSphere Streams</a> analytics platform to score such models on millions of events from the network and make predictions of customer experience. During the pilot, our application processed billions of records that included mobile app usage and performance, and network location. It then evaluated and visualized how these factors affected churn rate, customer care and Net Promoter Score.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%;">For example, we uncovered an issue with a mobile application that was linked to a high percentage of retransmitted data, which resulted in many customer care calls during the monitored days, as well as for two subsequent weeks. If the telco had deployed our predictive solution in real time, it would have been able to identify the issue well in advance, and proactively communicate it to the customers, thus reducing the number of customer care calls.</span></i><span style="font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%;">– <a href="http://researcher.ibm.com/researcher/view.php?person=ie-e.diaz-aviles">Ernesto Diaz-Aviles</a>, machine learning and data scientist, IBM Research-Ireland </span></div></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Tms Rmn"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IE;">The system discovered the issue by training what we call a Restrictive Random Forest model. It observed customer transactions in the telco’s data feed. It then generated an ensemble of decision trees that labeled each daily experience as either positive or negative, based on if a help call was made. This approach could allow the system to help prepare call center agents to manage a problem before a call, better manage a call that does come through, or tell technicians of a (potential) mechanical failure – before anyone experiences an outage. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%;">My team, and our system, will continue to study the individual aspects of user behavior and the reasons for their calls. Our goal is to build personalized models for segments of users, an approach we expect to more-accurately predict the user’s mobile experience. So, maybe in the future, customers will make a call on their telco’s network for something other than reporting a complaint. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">For more, read: </span><span style="color: #0000ee;"><span style="font-size: 17.3333339691162px; line-height: 18.546667098999px;"><u><a href="http://arxiv.org/pdf/1508.02884v1.pdf" target="_blank">Towards Real-time Customer Experience Prediction for Telecommunication Operators</a></u></span></span><span style="font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">, by </span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-family: "HelvNeue Light for IBM",sans-serif; font-size: 13.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-IE;"><a href="http://arxiv.org/find/cs/1/au:+Diaz_Aviles_E/0/1/0/all/0/1">Ernesto Diaz-Aviles</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/cs/1/au:+Pinelli_F/0/1/0/all/0/1">Fabio Pinelli</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/cs/1/au:+Lynch_K/0/1/0/all/0/1">Karol Lynch</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/cs/1/au:+Nabi_Z/0/1/0/all/0/1">Zubair Nabi</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/cs/1/au:+Gkoufas_Y/0/1/0/all/0/1">Yiannis Gkoufas</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/cs/1/au:+Bouillet_E/0/1/0/all/0/1">Eric Bouillet</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/cs/1/au:+Calabrese_F/0/1/0/all/0/1">Francesco Calabrese</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/cs/1/au:+Coughlan_E/0/1/0/all/0/1">Eoin Coughlan</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/cs/1/au:+Holland_P/0/1/0/all/0/1">Peter Holland</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/cs/1/au:+Salzwedel_J/0/1/0/all/0/1">Jason Salzwedel</a></span></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>

big data ibm research - Ireland machine learning telco Helping customers before they call

by Francesco Calabrese , manager of Smarter Urban Dynamics, IBM Research-Ireland   As our smartphones get smarter, we’re using more Over-The...

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Using analytics to get smart about water

<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Profile of a scientist: Ernesto Arandia</i></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhGV1xcXxX7MrqMnBE6bpAuQ-_f64e_vNX5zY2gTifPvrphCf_yYBfrORWteXQo-g4QRra5BF0VlL97xCNpi-re7jekX7CSwJquz0zCow1PgIv30JVbq5xJbjtiZ5J2mNTyUfqaZk_x3U/s1600/ernestopic.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhGV1xcXxX7MrqMnBE6bpAuQ-_f64e_vNX5zY2gTifPvrphCf_yYBfrORWteXQo-g4QRra5BF0VlL97xCNpi-re7jekX7CSwJquz0zCow1PgIv30JVbq5xJbjtiZ5J2mNTyUfqaZk_x3U/s200/ernestopic.PNG" width="171" /></a></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><u><span style="color: #0563c1;"><a href="http://researcher.ibm.com/researcher/view.php?person=ie-ERNESTOA">Ernesto Arandia</a></span></u><span style="color: #333333;">, a data scientist with the IBM Smarter Water team in Dublin, Ireland, grew up half a planet away, in land-locked Bolivia. It was this life high in the Andes, where water availability is an issue for all citizens that spurred his interest in water management, and the pursuit of a PhD in Hydraulic Science at the University of Cincinnati. </span></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: small;">He parlayed his research and creation of tools to manage water usage via smart meters and demand forecasting into a job with IBM Research-Ireland in 2013. Today, he is working on two research applications, a Water Network Analytics Toolkit and <a href="http://ibmresearchnews.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/analytics-helping-cities-and-citizens.html">iWIDGET</a></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #333333;">. Both of which deal with water demand and management by reducing cost and waste.</span></span></span><br /><a name="more"></a><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #333333;"></span></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: #333333;">What interested you in the IBM Research-Ireland Smarter Cities Technology Centre (SCTC)?</span></b></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: #333333;">EA:</span></b><span style="color: #333333;"> My interests are in modeling urban water and environmental systems, stochastic processes, and data mining, as well as the design and optimization of hydraulic and civil infrastructure. With my civil and environmental engineering background, the IBM lab in Dublin seemed the perfect place to pursue my research on sustainability projects in the area of water management.</span></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: #333333;">What did you focus on for your PhD at the University of Cincinnati?</span></b></span></span></div><div style="margin: 13.9pt 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: #333333;">EA: </span></b><span style="color: #333333;">My research in Cincinnati involved experimental and computational research for accurate estimation of real-time water usage, measured by smart meters. It was part of an EPA-funded project for the development of a contaminant warning system after 9/11, which required modelling contaminant transport and water quality in water distribution systems. The main goal was to develop a fine resolution model capable of predicting how water is used in an urban water network across space and time. </span></span></span></div><div style="margin: 13.9pt 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: small;">The experimental part involved setting up fixed monitoring stations to collect smart meter data from thousands of utility customers. Cincinnati Water Works was one of the first utilities in the US to fully adopt smart meters in their metro area – which created a unique research opportunity for me. </span></span></div><div style="margin: 13.9pt 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: small;">My first challenge was to find areas where the stations could monitor the consumption of a sample of users as large and as diverse as possible. This required a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analysis of topography, demographics and socio-economics. The data collection stage took about two years and provided a dataset rich enough to understand, characterize, and represent water usage. </span></span></div><div style="margin: 13.9pt 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: small;">One of the main outcomes of the project was a model for synthetic generation of demands that vary periodically and resemble real smart meter demands. Another outcome was a model to forecast water demand aggregated at useful scales, which can be used to estimate and forecast water consumption in an urban water network in real time.</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: #333333;">What was the first project you worked on after joining the Smarter Water team?</span></b></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: #70ad47;"><br /></span></b></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSbBUWbjoXwmVilr2M7H85AXvXmTrYf1crXIFJNc-fH6ndl7MBHAwL4weNIrbTYCeTZnqVits2ORB2ENjLnbUICU7wiMeTBA8NSsxvfB5zwrkb_tkLx-2ry_dyEfU8IrY1P0W12n34pYg/s1600/bblawn-team-pic-lowRes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSbBUWbjoXwmVilr2M7H85AXvXmTrYf1crXIFJNc-fH6ndl7MBHAwL4weNIrbTYCeTZnqVits2ORB2ENjLnbUICU7wiMeTBA8NSsxvfB5zwrkb_tkLx-2ry_dyEfU8IrY1P0W12n34pYg/s320/bblawn-team-pic-lowRes.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></span></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Pictured Smarter Water Team L-R:</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Joe Sawaya-Naoum, Ernesto Arandia,</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Bradley Eck and Fabian Wirth</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: #333333;">EA:</span></b><span style="color: #333333;"> Our Smarter Water team entered a challenge posed by the Water Distribution Systems Analysis Conference called the <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877705814022681">Battle of Background Leakage Assessment for Water Networks (BBLAWN)</a>. BBLAWN asked for a methodology for recommending changes to the design and operation of a water distribution system to minimize total expenditure, while meeting service requirements. </span></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Our entry paper, called</span> <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877705814022759" target="_blank">A Simulation-Optimization Approach for Reducing Background Leakage in Water Systems</a>,</span><span style="color: #333333; font-size: small;"> detailed a hydraulic model that simulates background leakage, custom implementations of heuristic algorithms, and optimization solvers. The solution methodology we proposed decomposed the overall problem into smaller more tractable problems aimed at a single type of decision. We found that examining each problem individually had the advantage of simplifying implementation of software and interpretation of results, and allowing parts of the problem to be examined in parallel. </span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: small;">The annual expenditure of the simulated town (called “C-Town”) was €3.9 million, but our models were able to reduce this to €1.5 million. This took into account both capital expenditure (rehab and infrastructure such as replacing pumps, pipes, valves, tanks) and operational expenditure (electricity costs as well as environmental penalties for wastage). Our main recommendation to "C-Town" was to invest about €600,000 to correct background leakage issues. This greatly reduced the amount of water loss in the network, as well as costs such as environmental penalties. This solution illustrates what a city could achieve in terms of managing leakage and overall operations.</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: small;">Our work paid off as we won the competition for having the best combination of solution methodology, and economy of proposed infrastructural and management changes.</span></span><b><span style="color: #333333;"> </span></b><br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: #333333;">What are you working on now?</span></b></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: #333333;">EA: </span></b><span style="color: #333333;">I am currently working on a Water Networks Analytics Toolkit. It provides decision support for a range of operational and planning problems on water networks and building blocks for new solutions. It's a</span> web-based application that knows the optimal time to replace mechanical equipment such as pumps and meters; calculates water bills under various pricing schemes; and makes adaptive water pricing recommendations.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">I am also involved with a project called <a href="http://ibmresearchnews.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/analytics-helping-cities-and-citizens.html">iWIDGET</a>, which uses<span style="color: black;"> analytics and smart meters to gather real-time data on water and related energy usage. The aim of the project is to improve the management of urban water demand by reducing waste, providing utilities with deeper insights into end-user demand, and ultimately reducing customer water and energy costs. </span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; font-size: small;">iWIDGET </span><span style="color: #333333; font-size: small;">provides information to householders to help them reduce their water usage, and also provides utility companies better visibility of their customers’ usage. This improved visibility lets the utility perform more accurate demand forecasting, and alert customers of suspected leaks. </span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: #333333;">What is the future of smarter water management?</span></b></span></span> <br /><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: #333333;">EA:</span></b><span style="color: #333333;"> Water is a constrained resource, so utilities have the dual task of reducing losses through leaks in the network as well as reducing overall consumption. The best way to tackle these issues is by integrating government regulation, customer behavior and the utility’s own approach to improving infrastructure and measurement of usage. </span></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: small;">Water utilities can learn from the energy and utilities sector, as it has a more highly developed model for pricing and demand management. The energy sector uses, for instance, an effective pricing mechanism based on “time of use” which means consumers use less power at peak times to reduce the chance of an outage. </span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: small;">Energy suppliers and distributors are also more proactively optimising their networks, using demand forecasting to balance energy supply (including renewables) with consumer demand. The water utilities should adapt and add to these components from the energy model instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: #333333;">What is your advice to future water scientists? </span></b></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: #333333;">EA: </span></b><span style="color: #333333;">I see great opportunities to do joint research with scientists working in the energy domain. I think this collaboration can lead to new and more effective methodologies for water and energy management. It can also yield new combined strategies to improve water and energy efficiency. The data to support such cross-discipline research is increasingly becoming available and it is well known that systems cannot be fully described in total isolation. For instance, planning the optimal rehabilitation of a water network cannot be approached effectively with disregard for optimal electricity consumption. </span></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: small;">I feel privileged to work in an environment that offers an abundance of human and material resources of quality to address meaningful projects and to conduct exciting and innovative research. I think that it is important for young scientists to take the knowledge and solutions they developed and bring them back to their origins, in my case Latin America. </span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: small;">For instance, in Bolivia, we do not have a continuous supply of water, which impacts our poorer citizens the most. I think that the work I have done can help make a difference. 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analytics demand forecasting environment ibm research - Ireland smarter cities smarter water Using analytics to get smart about water

Profile of a scientist: Ernesto Arandia Ernesto Arandia , a data scientist with the IBM Smarter Water team in Dublin, Ireland, grew up half ...

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Analytics helping cities and citizens smartly manage water metering

<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.0pt;">Real-time data on water usage benefits providers and end users</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.0pt;"></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.0pt;">Editor’s note: This article is by <u><a href="http://researcher.ibm.com/researcher/view.php?person=ie-bradley.eck">Bradley Eck</a></u>, IBM Research-Ireland’s Smarter Cities Technology Centre manager in Dublin.</span></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><img src="//img2.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" style="background-color: #b2b2b2; " class="BLOGGER-object-element tr_noresize tr_placeholder" id="ieooui" data-original-id="ieooui" /><style>st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } </style><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style><![endif]--><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhftOGuXArfu269FEnzhnak4m4_XfKe5sd28Zl2C25lvs_VwFXggiGSMFBiOYBlpyMcaQaAStmY5LPIHjo7IpJ4xci5bd0eAtBMBQ-RiGTnbvXgzS0K2uraa05kpz81NLQjhZheu6FkZiE/s1600/bradley.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhftOGuXArfu269FEnzhnak4m4_XfKe5sd28Zl2C25lvs_VwFXggiGSMFBiOYBlpyMcaQaAStmY5LPIHjo7IpJ4xci5bd0eAtBMBQ-RiGTnbvXgzS0K2uraa05kpz81NLQjhZheu6FkZiE/s1600/bradley.jpg" /></a></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:UseFELayout/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.0pt;">A faucet that drips just once per second wastes 2,700 gallons of water, annually. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.0pt;">My<span style="color: black;"> Water and Environment team is developing tools and methodologies, as part of an EU-funded project called </span><u><span style="color: blue;"><a href="http://www.i-widget.eu/">iWIDGET</a></span></u>,<span style="color: black;"> to manage urban water demand by reducing waste like leaky taps. </span></span><br /><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.0pt;">iWIDGET links 9 expert </span><u><span style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.0pt;"><a href="http://www.i-widget.eu/partners/partner-responsibilities.html">partners</a></span></u><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.0pt;"> together to look at how analytics and smart meters can help cities and their citizens get real-time data on their water and related energy usage – with the aim of improving the management of urban water demand by reducing waste, and improving utilities’ understanding of end-user demand, and ultimately reducing customer water and energy costs. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.0pt;"></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br /></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/global/images/us__en_us__water__info1__300x170.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/global/images/us__en_us__water__info1__300x170.png" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/global/files/us__en_us__water__water_infographic_031512.pdf">Download Infographic</a></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.0pt;">iWIDGET </span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.0pt;">provides householders with easily accessible information that will allow them to make decisions on how to reduce water usage, and thus, their water bills. Plus, as utilities will have better visibility on their customers’ usage, they will be able to more-accurately forecast demand – and send their customers alerts if a leak is suspected. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.0pt;">Building iWidget</span></b><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.0pt;"></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.0pt;">For our part, my team in Dublin focused on iWIDGET’s system architecture to improve a utility’s planning, operation, and management of real-time sensor data, and developed analytics around the high-resolution consumption data. <span style="color: black;">Not an easy task, as this involves noisy raw data and dozens of third party systems and analytical tools. </span>So, we built an API for the entire system that connects and interfaces with each partner’s components.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br /></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimyk2B60p89Yp3351YtSTYgoziNAAUPOtRY4Vm73HYRQEuY45gVsLzhAsERn2i38U1hnt4GIONBaM8neVhdGQa9NqwgjfHrO0KJWdnfiKhTflqkTS8U8G-bPev-NWrZyLJSY7_QeP5oLgv/s1600/mobile_app.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimyk2B60p89Yp3351YtSTYgoziNAAUPOtRY4Vm73HYRQEuY45gVsLzhAsERn2i38U1hnt4GIONBaM8neVhdGQa9NqwgjfHrO0KJWdnfiKhTflqkTS8U8G-bPev-NWrZyLJSY7_QeP5oLgv/s1600/mobile_app.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">iWidget on the iPhone</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.0pt;">Some of the components can be accessed via mobile applications. Meter Replacement, for example, looks at the history of readings and meter type to determine the best time to replace their meters. Another app focuses on pump scheduling, where real time data from smart meters feed in to a pumping plan that helps reduce energy costs.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.0pt;">iWIDGET system trials have started in Portugal, Greece and the UK, and will conclude in 2015. The envisaged outcome of the iWIDGET project is increased interoperability between water information systems at the European Union and national levels, and overall improved efficiency of water resource management.<span style="background: #FBFBFB; color: black;"> </span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="background: #FBFBFB; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.0pt;">For more information on the project please visit the</span><span style="background: #FBFBFB; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.0pt;"> </span><u><span style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.0pt;"><a href="http://www.i-widget.eu/" target="_blank"><span style="background: #FBFBFB; color: #745285;">iWIDGET project website</span></a></span></u><span style="background: #FBFBFB; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.0pt;">, or join our group on</span><span style="background: #FBFBFB; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.0pt;"> </span><u><span style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.0pt;"><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups/FP7-project-iWIDGET-smart-meters-4835109" target="_blank"><span style="background: #FBFBFB; color: #745285;">LinkedIn</span></a></span></u><span style="background: #FBFBFB; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.0pt;">, </span><span style="background: #FBFBFB; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.0pt;">or follow</span><span style="background: #FBFBFB; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.0pt;"> </span><u><span style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.0pt;"><a href="https://twitter.com/iWIDGET_FP7" target="_blank"><span style="background: #FBFBFB; color: #745285;">@iWIDGET_FP7</span></a></span></u><span style="background: #FBFBFB; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.0pt;"> </span><span style="background: #FBFBFB; color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.0pt;">on Twitter.</span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><img src="//img2.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" style="background-color: #b2b2b2; " class="BLOGGER-object-element tr_noresize tr_placeholder" id="ieooui" data-original-id="ieooui" /><style>st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } </style><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style><![endif]--><br /><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></div>

ibm research - Ireland iwidget mobile application development smarter water utilities Analytics helping cities and citizens smartly manage water metering

Real-time data on water usage benefits providers and end users Editor’s note: This article is by Bradley Eck , IBM Research-Ireland’s Smarte...

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