City of Boulder today announced that IBM has selected the city to receive an IBM Smarter Cities Challenge grant.

The grant provides Boulder and 23 other cities worldwide with access to IBM’s top experts to analyze and recommend ways Boulder can become an even better place in which to live, work and play. The approximate value of each Smarter Cities Challenge grant is equivalent to as much as $400,000.

The IBM Smarter Cities Challenge is a competitive grant program in which IBM is awarding a total of $50 million worth of technology and services to 100 municipalities worldwide over the next three years. Teams of specially selected IBM experts will provide city leaders with analysis and recommendations to support successful growth, better delivery of municipal services, more citizen engagement, and improved efficiency.

In its application for the IBM Smarter Cities Challenge, Boulder identified three potential projects to work with an IBM expert team. The projects focused on developing new technology applications to support community action in key areas: community engagement, sustainability indicators, and smart grid-enabled energy management. The project selected by IBM focuses on the smart grid, as Boulder is the home of the nation’s first fully integrated smart grid. The City of Boulder will explore the project scope and details with IBM over the next few weeks, as well as with Xcel Energy, which owns and operates the project, known as SmartGridCity™. IBM will help the city explore the potential for consumer-facing devices to help residents and businesses become more savvy energy managers, and increasing the potential for distributed renewable energy generation in the city.

“Over 46,000 homes and businesses have been enabled with communications technology that supports a smart grid platform,” said City Manager Jane Brautigam. “Energy management tools in the hands of our residents could be an integral part of optimizing smart grid technology for Boulder and other cities throughout the nation.”

IBM selected cities that made the strongest case for participating in the Smarter Cities Challenge. During these engagements, IBM technical experts, researchers and consultants immerse themselves in local issues and offer a range of options and recommended next steps. Among the issues they examine are healthcare, education, safety, social services, transportation, communications, sustainability, budget management, energy, and utilities.

“We selected the City of Boulder because of its commitment to the use of data to make better decisions, and for its desire to explore and act on smarter solutions to their most pressing concerns,” said Pete Lorenzen, IBM Boulder Senior Location Executive. “The cities we picked are eager to implement programs that tangibly improve the quality of life in their areas, and to create roadmaps for other cities to follow. The stakes have never been greater but we’re excited at the prospect of helping cities tackle the most pressing challenges of our time.”

Smarter Cities Challenge draws upon IBM’s intrinsic technological savvy, but also upon the field experience accumulated by IBM over the last three years from the company’s ongoing pro bono Corporate Service Corps grant program. Corporate Service Corps has deployed 100 teams of 1,000 top IBM employees from around the world with skills in technology, scientific research, marketing, finance, and business development. They work with local government, non profit civic groups, and small business to develop blueprints that intersect business, technology, and society.

Here are the 24 cities that earned IBM Smarter Cities Challenge grants in 2011:

Antofagasta, Chile
Boulder, CO
Bucharest, Romania
Chengdu, China
Chiang Mai, Thailand
Delhi, India
Edmonton, Canada
Eindhoven, Netherlands
Glasgow, UK
Guadalajara, Mexico
Helsinki, Finland
Jakarta, Indonesia
Milwaukee, WI
New Orleans, LA
Newark, NJ
Nice, France
Philadelphia, PA
Providence, RI
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Sapporo, Japan
St. Louis, MO
Syracuse, NY
Townsville, Australia
Tshwane-Pretoria, South Africa