Existing problems of a smart earth

Global economic losses from climate-related disasters totaled $1 trillion from 1980 to 2003, according to a 2004 report from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. During the same period, related insurance business in emerging markets covered only 4% of total losses from climate-related catastrophes. The situation is relatively better in high-income countries, at 40%. But there is still more than $500 billion in losses not covered by insurance.

Oil and natural gas: Current production from existing oil wells in the world accounts for only 20-30% of recoverable reserves. Drilling a new well costs a lot, but in fact, if we can appropriately increase the productivity of existing oil wells, the sum of the increases will also bring huge profits to producers and consumers will benefit from lower oil prices. But this is an information-intensive task, with just one oil or gas field generating around 1 terabyte (TB) of data per day. Using smart oilfield technology, oilfield workers can analyze recovery, fraction, pressure, acoustic and temperature data to optimize oil pump performance and well productivity; use historical trends to predict when a well will "water out"; and remote management of more wells from a central location.

The Danish National e-Health portal provides doctors with instant access to their patients' health histories and records. The new system has reduced associated administrative costs to just 1.3% of total spend (versus 31% in the United States), keeping Denmark's medical error rate among the lowest in the world (0.2%) and its patient satisfaction rate of 94%, the highest in Europe. Moreover, by using supercomputing power to predict genetic mutations of viruses, it is also possible to "see" and prevent diseases or even epidemics before they occur and spread.

A food tracking solution pioneered in the Nordic region uses radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to track meat and poultry products from farm to supply chain to supermarket shelves.

At present, it is also possible to carry out local high-precision weather forecast within a radius of 1-2 kilometers. These technologies have been commercialized for use in several urban areas, including New York City, Chicago, Kansas City, Atlanta, Baltimore/Washington, and Miami/Fort Lauderdale. IBM President and CEO Palmisano: How did we get to this point? We should thank the "flat world". The world can be on the same level not only because of openness, but also because of integration - which is equivalent to saying that the global economy and society are becoming a hyper-complex system composed of many complex systems - including how we buy, sell, manufacture and market; Discovering and harnessing oil, water, goods, electronics, and ourselves; and how to work with nature.

This situation may sound daunting, but it actually holds great promise. Complexity is very different from mere chaos. As our world becomes more integrated, once we cross the threshold and become a unified system, we will need to understand the world in a new way. This is not to say that the future world is "predictable" or within our control, but the way the world works will gradually become easier for us to understand and be influenced by us, which will also allow us to better find our way in this world. Location.

In the past, we could predict that this kind of understanding of how the world works would be possible, but it would actually be impossible to achieve it. Because all the systems the world operates on are analog. We did our best to do this, made a lot of guesswork, and wasted a lot of time, money, and energy. For example, even today, equipment utilization in data centers is only 6-10%. The situation is even worse for PCs.

So it would be incorrect to think that I see my industry and technology as exceptions to the general rules of how the world works. The client/server model (C/S architecture) that once represented advanced technology has now become silent. The reality is that with information technology from 15 years ago, you didn't even have a chance to solve the problem I described earlier. It wouldn't have been possible in 2005, when the technology was too expensive, too reliant on hardwired and underutilized hardware, had too many discrete components, the data centers were too small, and there was a lack of energy and management expertise.

Fortunately, new technological realities make huge advances possible. The emerging computing model is far more "smart" than the previous model: the Internet, based on open standards and a huge number of client devices (heterogeneous systems and applications are no longer an obstacle); powerful backend systems - not only unprecedented Computing speed, advanced analysis, modeling and virtualization capabilities. The new computing model is based on a new application model - software is componentized, dynamically configured and provided as a network service, rather than being hard-wired to a server. We can integrate data from numerous sources and analyze it in new ways—not just uncovering new patterns, but reacting to those patterns in industry processes.