IBM announced that it has been selected to implement a city infrastructure project as part of the U-safety City project for Incheon Free Economic Zone (IFEZ), which was set up by the government in an effort to turn South Korea into a major economic hub in Northeast Asia.

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The city infrastructure project, which will lay the foundation of the U-safety system in the old and new Incheon downtown, is an integral part of the government's efforts of building IFEZ as an interconnected, environment-friendly, digitalized and modern city. It is partly aimed to improve Incheon's public safety to support the organization of The Global Fair & Festival Incheon 2009 and The Asian Games 2014. The Global Fair & Festival Incheon, held from August 7 to October 25, will showcase Incheon's achievements as a model future city equipped with urban solutions, cutting-edge technology and energy efficient, environment friendly facilities.

Under the agreement signed in March 2009, IBM will build a public safety system utilizing high resolution cameras to view and monitor activities in IFEZ, helping the Authority prevent crime and even predict possible events by recognizing and analyzing certain patterns and data in real-time. It detects suspicious objects or people by identifying and analyzing patterns in the footage and simultaneously notifies the results to relevant agencies via high-speed wired or wireless network. The system allows for easy search and analysis of past data and connection to other digital appliances.

The public safety system consists of an analytics framework, meta-data structures, event searching, video storage, video analysis servers and monitor applications. The video management server implements the preliminary analysis of the video streams from the CCTV and sends information to the monitors in real-time. The application then conducts a more intelligent analysis of the data based on event search and event statistics services.

"IBM is advancing its 'Smart Planet' projects to upgrade people's quality of life with its smart IT technology that enables smarter social system and infrastructure," said Wonjong Kim, General Manager, Global Technology Services, IBM Korea. "As we introduce the intelligent safety system to Korea for the first time, we will further commit ourselves to offering industry standards-based security service model for other cities in Korea in an effort to make Korea smarter and safer."

The safety system is built by the IBM Global Technology Services team using IBM technology including IBM System Storage, IBM DB2 UDB, IBM WebSphere Application Server and MQ. The system, running on a flight of IBM System x 3650 Servers, will be operated by SK Engineering & Construction Co. Ltd and S1 Corporation under the administration of the Incheon Metropolitan Government and the IFEZ Authority.

The U-safety City project for IFEZ is initiated by Incheon metropolitan government and IFEZ Authority to prevent crimes and lay framework for ubiquitous city infrastructure. Incheon government plans to deploy diverse u-service infrastructure to ensure the safety of its citizens. The programs includes SOS emergency rescue, remote controllable safety lamps in vulnerable areas, as well as the intelligent public safety system and wireless city safety network, which is implemented by IBM.

About Incheon Free Economic Zone (IFEZ)

The Incheon Free Economic Zone (IFEZ), located in Incheon, South Korea, consists of the three regions of Songdo, Cheongna and the island of Yeongjong, and have a total area of 51,739 acres (209.38 km(2)). The goal of the IFEZ is to transform these three areas into hubs for logistics, international business, leisure, and tourism for the Northeast Asian region. For more information about IFEZ, visit http://eng.ifez.go.kr/front.asp

For more information about the Global Fair & Festival Incheon 2009, go to http://english.incheonfair.org/index.asp

  About IBM
  For more information about IBM, visit www.ibm.com

  Myunghee Son
  Communications, IBM Korea
  Tel: +82 2 3781 4681
  Email: mhson@kr.ibm.com

  Harriet Ip
  Communications, Growth Markets Unit, IBM
  Tel: +65-64181521
  Email: harrieti@sg.ibm.com

  Jennifer Knecht
  External Communications Manager
  IBM Global Technology Services
  Office: 917.472.3607/Tieline: 522-3607
  Mobile: 201.916.0263
  knechtj@us.ibm.com

First Call Analyst:
FCMN Contact: knechtj@us.ibm.com

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SOURCE: IBM