Meeting the world’s energy and water needs in a sustainable fashion is arguably the most critical challenge of the 21st century. The issues we face present tremendous opportunities for CITRIS and IBM. IBM has responded by creating the Smarter Planet initiative, an important part of its contribution to a more intelligent global infrastructure, of which energy and water are critical – perhaps the critical – components.
IBM has made a generous gift of a cloud computing cluster, housed in a dedicated laboratory in Sutardja Dai Hall that will lend significant resources to solving some of the most challenging problems facing us in energy and water.
CITRIS, in partnership with IBM and state and Federal agencies such as the California Energy Commission and the U.S. Department of Energy, respectively, will advance the understanding of how the integration of a wide range of technologies, from its pioneering contributions to wireless sensor networks to its exploration of the appropriate applications for and limits of cloud computing, will lead to a more comprehensive model – a “world simulator” – of how we respond to the needs for energy and sustainability.