It’s no secret massive waste pervades the health-care industry. Some of that waste stems from unnecessarily complex interactions between doctors, patients, and insurance companies. By making the entire process hospital care more efficient, we could help limit that waste. By using electronic medical records and streamlining procedures, hospitals could save billions of dollars, which could in turn be spent on better care.

A collaboration between GOOD and Oliver Munday.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The ability to locate a shooting quickly can help police catch bad guys and save lives. In Richmond, California, acoustic gunfire detection is doing just that. With acoustic sensors distributed around the city, dispatchers can use the sound of gunfire to pinpoint where a shooting happened, the number of shots fired, and even the kind of gun that was used.

To keep citizens safe, city police departments are constantly looking for an edge to make themselves faster and more responsive in the face of criminal activity. Here are five cities that are using technological innovations to concentrate their efforts when and where they are most needed, and to get to crime scenes as fast as possible.

A collaboration between GOOD and Oliver Munday.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Most of the world’s population now lives in cities. How can we make sure these urban centers are good homes for humanity? Cities from Bogotá and Rio de Janeiro to Seoul are leading the way, using fresh ideas to reduce pollution and waste; provide efficient, clean transportation; and support biodiversity.

New technologies are constantly being deployed to help a city’s citizens get from point A to point B as quickly as possible. By monitoring and improving its traffic flow from a centrally located transportation systems center, a city can make everyone’s commute faster. Click here to see how it works.

A collaboration between GOOD, Oliver Munday, and Redub.

Each city is a collection of massive systems, all of which must interact seamlessly in order for the metropolis to function. This is a look at what makes up each of these systems. The numbers themselves are culled from New York, one of the world’s most quintessential cities, but they could be comparable to any urban center. From transportation to health care to the government itself, a city is only as good as the sum of its parts.

Click here to see the infographic.

A collaboration between GOOD and Oliver Munday.

Currently, more than half the world’s population lives in cities. And the complex collection of systems that make up a city’s infrastructure have evolved, creating new and efficient ways to sustain and support a significant concentration of people. But inside all cities are problem areas that can be optimized and made smarter—improving the function of the metropolis and the lives of its citizens.

These pieces spotlight eight cities around the world that benefited by the introduction of novel technologies, from cameras that improve traffic flow in Singapore to a process that generates heat and electricity simultaneously in Chicago. These are just a few examples of what cities are doing to investigate how their systems function and devise ways to make them work better. It’s this kind of innovation and daring that we are examining at GOOD.IS/cities, a website where you can find infographics on city systems, stories on how they can be improved, and video documentaries about solutions in action. By transforming our urban centers, we can improve the lives of the majority of people on the planet, and inspire even more innovation in how our cities serve their residents.

ENERGY Intelligent Utility Network: Copenhagen, Denmark

TRAFFIC Intelligent Transport Systems Center: Singapore

WATER Leakfrog: London

EDUCATION Helping Involve Parents: New York City

PUBLIC SAFETY Crime Prediction Software: Richmond, Virginia

OIL AND GAS Cogeneration: Chicago

HEALTH CARE Intermountain Healthcare: Salt Lake City, Utah

GOVERNMENT E-Government: Albuquerque, New Mexico

A collaboration between GOOD and Oliver Munday.

Intelligent Utility Network: Copenhagen, Denmark

In 2006, six Danish utilities merged to form DONG Energy, the largest energy company in Denmark. DONG—with the help of IBM—installed a number of new remote sensors to make up an intelligent utility network that provides real-time information from the grid, allowing the utility to react much faster to outages than before. More data helps network planning: The program is projected to save the company up to 80 percent on upcoming reinforcements to its grid.

Intelligent Transport Systems Center: Singapore 

Singapore has been monitoring and improving its  traffic flow from its centrally located Intelligent Transport Systems Center for the past two decades. New technologies are constantly being deployed to help its citizens can get from point A to point B as quickly as possible. The system uses cameras to scan the streets for congestion and accidents, allowing the city to clear wrecks faster and recommend alternate routes. Singapore is currently working with IBM to pilot a tool which will predict traffic conditions up to an hour in advance, with accuracy rates of more than 85 percent.

To view these infographics, click here.

A collaboration between GOOD and Oliver Munday.

Leakfrog: London

Leakfrog, a device customers attach to their water meter to determine if their pipes are leaking, has proved an invaluable resource in reducing the amount of water lost in London’s more than 10,000 miles of underground pipes. As Leakfrog usage has increased, Thames Water, the city’s water utility, has reduced its leakage for four years running, totaling a 20 percent drop in water lost to leaky pipes.

Helping Involve Parents: New York City

Parents of schoolchildren in New York City are becoming more involved in their kids’ education thanks to an innovative communication system set up by the organization Helping Involve Parents. The network, which can be accessed by phone or on the internet, lets parents see their child’s homework assignments and get reports on his or her experience, from participation to truancy. Now active in more than 200 schools (most of them middle schools) and connecting nearly 4,000 teachers to close to 7,000 parents, the system hosted nearly 2 million communications in the 2007–2008 school year.

To see these infographics, click here.

A collaboration between GOOD and Oliver Munday.

Crime Prediction Software: Richmond, Virginia

Starting in 2006, the Richmond Police Department didn’t just get  proactive about crime—it got predictive. The city, which had just been named the fifth most dangerous in the United States, turned to a strategy similar to that used in the movie Minority Report. Combing through reams of historical data, the RPD armed its police officers with the information necessary to assess where crimes were most likely to take place. It’s not just crime-related statistics that are important; weather conditions, days of the week, and even phases of the moon are taken into account. Today, Richmond is nowhere to be found among America’s most dangerous cities.

Cogeneration: Chicago

The city of Chicago estimates that by 2020 it will need 27 billion kilowatt-hours more electricity to stay powered than it did in 2000. Rather than build new plants, the city is making its sys- tems more efficient. It plans to get a quarter of that power from cogeneration—combined heat and power. Standard natural gas burning creates a lot of wasted heat, but cogeneration reuses that extra heat to produce electricity by using it to boil water and push the steam through a turbine—more than doubling the efficiency of natural gas (from 30 percent to 80 percent). That means lower energy costs and lower energy usage, which means fewer emissions. By 2010, Chicago wants to be producing 1.5 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity through cogeneration. Buildings that can benefit from independent sources of power, like museums, hospitals, schools, and office buildings, are ideal sites for cogeneration facilities.

To see these infographics, click here.

A collaboration between GOOD and Oliver Munday.