Smart Community Safety Lab from IBM and METU
The Smart Community Safety Laboratory realized with the cooperation of IBM and Middle East Technical University (METU) opened with a signing ceremony on 9 December 2010. The lab that takes place in the METU campus combines the research capabilities of METU with IBM’s field experience and will form a basis in activities on improving community safety through innovative approaches and methodologies. In order to provide different applications related to community and environmental safety, in answering extraordinary situations that may arise and with advanced research, tests and the development of prototypes in the application of smart systems, the Smart Community Safety Laboratory will be tested in its applicability and scalability to the real world through the results of joint research by IMB and METU.
Pilot work will take place at the Smart Community Safety Lab to test new technologies in real life and this new technology will be improved based on information and experience gained in the field. Research and development work will be carried out on providing semantic viewing processing, multi media, data mining, wireless sensor networks, data processing in a dispersion medium and database systems. In this way, the thesis studies on smart community safety solutions by academicians will be supported.
Speaking at the opening ceremony, Prof. Dr. Ahmet Acar, Rector of METU, emphasized the cooperation between university and industry and stated that METU’s effective research ability and IBM’s application experiences that will come together in this laboratory is a good example of university-industry cooperation and that they were pleased with this cooperation taking place. Rector Acar said: “In particular seeing theoretical knowledge being applied to real life, is of utmost importance to students for it accelerates the leaning process and allows it to convert into permanent knowledge. Our wish is that this type of cooperation is increased and that research and solutions on real world problems contributes to the socio-economic development of our country.”
IBM, having undertaken the coordination of the Smart Community Safety Lab, its Consulting Services Public Sector Leader Mr. Giovanni Aliverti said the following: “All cities throughout the world are obtaining strength from analytical information fed from sensors, global positioning systems, cameras, radio frequency tags and integrated communications. Smart transportation, smart nutrition, smart energy, smart water and in other similar areas these types of systems contribute to value added and their solutions are of significant importance in the development of improvements in public safety. Public safety is the indispensible component of smart world, smart city and smart community. For these reasons, with the cooperation between METU and IBM, the Smart Community Safety Laboratory that has commenced activities, will, I believe, undertake a very important role.
The Head of the Department of Computer Engineering at METU, Prof. Dr. Adnan Yazıcı, provided information on the Smart Community Safety Laboratoryand said: “The image analysis, the multimedia systems and semantic information processing research at our laboratory will, in my opinion, encourage work for a smarter community safety and as a result we feel very excited about this. With the advances in technology, the use of information based systems that automatically determines and evaluates events and that responds immediately and by analyzing information it continuously collects, it provides recommendations based on real time solutions, thus the aim is obtaining a more effective community safety. Our department has significant accumulation of knowledge and capabilities on these subjects. We believe that with these capabilities combined with the competence and accumulation of knowledge that IBM has and that provides solutions for a “Smart World,” very significant R&D projects will appear. The use of new technologies and creating smarter solutions through interdisciplinary approaches will open new horizons in community and environmental safety.”
Providing information on IBM and university collaboration, IBM Middle East, Europe and Turkey University Relations Leader Jale Akyel stated the following: “We, as IBM give great importance to community, nation, university and sector centered information based on socio-economic contributions of value. As with previous collaboration in many areas, we are pleased to work together with METU now on the Smart Community Safety Laboratory. Thanks to the collaboration between IBM and METU, this laboratory, by expanding information and communications technology systems for the public sector and local public administrations will, we believe, make it possible to encourage and expand its use in the most effective manner.”
