IBM today announced that Kitson & Partners, the developers of Babcock Ranch, the first fully sustainable city now under development in Southwest Florida, will be using IBM software to plan and design the city's extensive technology systems.

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The new city of Babcock Ranch is a hub of innovation, drawing on the best thinking in conservation, community and urban planning, as well as on advancements in transportation systems, energy efficiency and sustainability. The Babcock Ranch city planners will use IBM Rational Focal Point software to coordinate engineering and construction, economic development, and help manage the complexity of building a smart city.

The city of Babcock Ranch will ultimately include 6 million square feet of retail, commercial, office, civic and light industrial space. The entire city will be wireless, internet enabled, and an ultra-high-capacity digital pipeline will support the use of current and emerging technologies.

"We've joined forces with IBM to drive the convergence of physical and digital technologies necessary to our success," said Syd Kitson, Chairman and CEO of Kitson & Partners. "This partnership will allow us to design a comprehensive 'system of systems' architecture for the city of Babcock Ranch, with all components interconnected and mutually supportive."

The 17,000-acre city of Babcock Ranch will consume less power, allowing it to become the first city powered by zero-emission solar energy. The city of Babcock Ranch will also be home to an integrated "smart grid" that will provide greater efficiencies and allow residents and businesses to monitor and control their energy consumption. All commercial buildings and homes in the new city will be certified as energy-efficient and constructed according to Florida Green Building Council standards. The city of Babcock Ranch is also a model of conservation: over half of its 17,000 acres will be permanently protected as greenways and open space, and the city is adjacent to the 73,000-acre Babcock Ranch Preserve.

"The opportunity presented by a city like Babcock Ranch is the opportunity of sustainable prosperity," said Dr. Daniel Sabbah, IBM Rational general manager. "Pervasive new technologies provide a much greater scope for the instrumentation, interconnection and intelligence of a city's core systems. This revolution is being driven by software innovation and the critical need for our cities of the future to address networks, infrastructures and environments, holistically."

IBM Rational Focal Point is a comprehensive solution for product and project portfolio management that can improve product value and increase business agility by applying investment principles to the entire project life cycle - from idea through completion. Babcock Ranch aims to reduce risk and improve cost estimates of investments by modeling financial and market impacts. To do so, it will use Focal Point to collect and integrate multiple decision criteria from internal and external stakeholders; analyze multiple opportunities to identify the impacts and opportunities of decisions; and continually validate the value of investments. Focal Point can help reduce the anxiety and unpredictability of planning and trade-off analysis by focusing on stakeholder, market, customer, and business ROI.

About IBM

For more information about IBM Smarter Cities, visit http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/sustainable_cities/ideas/

Download IBM's Executive Report: Vision of Smarter Cities: ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/pm/xb/n/gbe03227usen/GBE03227USEN.PDF

For more information about IBM Rational Focal Point, visit http://www-01.ibm.com/software/awdtools/focalpoint/

To access the INNOVATE 2010 online press kit, visit: http://www.ibm.com/press/innovate2010.

About Babcock Ranch, Florida:

For more information about Babcock Ranch, visit http://www.babcockranchflorida.com/index.asp

  Contact:
  Holly Barnett
  IBM Media Relations
  949-202-7218
  hbarnett@us.ibm.com

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

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SOURCE: IBM