– Through the IBM Sustainability Accelerator volunteer program, the organizations worked together on two projects to enable policymakers to identify the energy and infrastructure needs of communities in developing regions.
– IBM has developed the Open Building Insights platform, which includes an entirely new AI model to identify building usage, enabling stakeholders to make informed decisions on sustainable development in Africa and India.
– The open source Modeling Urban Growth model, developed by IBM and available now on GitHub, predicts where cities will grow.
November 14, 2024
COP29 BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 14, 2024 – At the 29th United Nations Conference of the Parties on Climate Change (COP29), IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) announce new publicly available artificial intelligence (AI)-based solutions to inform more sustainable urban development for cities and communities around the world, enabling policymakers and decision-makers to map urbanization and identify energy and infrastructure. needs of communities in developing regions.
“At IBM, we are proud to launch solutions that harness the power of artificial intelligence to impact communities around the world,” said John Matogo, head of corporate social responsibility for Africa and the Middle East at IBM. “Collaborating with organizations like Sustainable Energy for All through our IBM Sustainability Accelerator program helps us unlock innovation and work more closely within communities to tackle some of our biggest challenges, including energy and sustainable urban development.
Damilola Ogunbiyi, CEO and Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All and Co-Chair of UN-Energy, said: “At Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL), we believe that mainstreaming AI in energy sector planning and planning The evidence – particularly for developing countries – will go a long way in designing comprehensive solutions to many of the development challenges currently facing countries in the Global South and their populations. The Open Building Insights (OBI) tool, which SEforALL developed in collaboration with IBM, will help energy planners overcome critical challenges related to the lack of data to inform energy access and energy transition interventions , and to better deliver results for those who need them most.
In 2022, IBM began collaborating with SEforALL through the IBM Sustainable Development Accelerator program. First, IBM worked with the SEforALL team through IBM Garage, IBM’s collaborative engagement model. During the IBM Garage phase of the project, the organizations conceptualized and designed two AI solutions and an online platform to create a current and future view of buildings in the Africa and India regions.
Open Building Perspectives
Open Building Perspectives (OBI) is an interactive online platform running on IBM Cloud. OBI visually consolidates data onto a map, providing information relating to buildings in countries facing urban planning challenges, such as building location, height, floor area and type of use. This visual consolidation makes AI model results easy to understand for non-technical users and allows stakeholders to make informed decisions regarding sustainable urban development.
OBI’s interactive map consolidates models created by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), which estimates building heights, by Open Energy Maps, which provides information on electricity status and consumption, and by IBM.
The all-new AI model developed by IBM runs on IBM Cloud and was built using the IBM Watsonx AI and data platform. It uses building-specific data – including its footprint, number of stories, roof image, location and other map data – to determine whether a building is residential or non-residential. This categorization is essential for determining the energy needs of a given urban area.
OBI is freely available to the public and contains information across Kenya, and is already used in the country for energy planning. Based on information from the OBI platform developed by IBM, Makueni County in Kenya gained valuable information to implement measures that are expected to benefit approximately 1,139,000 citizens by 2030.
IBM model and DLR model are also available through OBI for Maharashtra state in India.
Urban growth modeling
Urban growth modeling (MUG) is an open source AI model designed to predict where cities will grow. The model is trained and validates historical data from satellite images; geographic data, such as slope and elevation; demographic data; and structural data, such as road layout, combining the data into a time series.
MUG helps users map future urbanization and associated infrastructure needs, enabling decision-makers to prioritize developing communities and regions that need support for issues such as electrification and energy services. MUG is an AI Alliance project, publicly available and open source on GitHub.
The model is currently trained on data from Africa including: Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana, Cameroon, Uganda, Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Rwanda and Malawi. However, the model is designed to be retrained by users in any country in the world, using publicly available data. On GitHub, MUG includes an explanatory guide on running code and making predictions using the same or different datasets, further expanding access for developers and decision makers.
Recognizing the potential of this work to provide even deeper insights into urban planning and development through the power of AI, IBM has expanded its collaboration with Sustainable Energy for All through the IBM Sustainability Accelerator. The organizations will initially focus on further expanding the Open Building Insights online platform in India and explore the integration of the Urban Growth Modeling AI model into the platform.
About the IBM Sustainability Accelerator
Launching in 2022, the IBM Sustainability Accelerator is a social impact program that addresses environmental threats affecting vulnerable communities around the world. Each year, the program selects approximately five projects aimed at advancing technology and AI solutions in a new thematic area of sustainability. To date, the IBM Sustainability Accelerator has supported 15 global projects across three active cohorts, focused on sustainable agriculture, clean energy and water management. For more information: https://www.ibm.com/impact/initiatives/ibm-sustainability-accelerator
Media Contact:
Carmen San Segundo
Director of IBM Global Communications, ESG and CSR
carmenssg@ibm.com
SOURCE IBM