What cities will look like in five years

"It's our observation that there is a massive trend towards urbanization. For the first time in our history, we've now reached the point where more people live in cities than not and so we are seeing the stresses," he said.

Campbell is already seeing some of the technologies in play in Canada and other parts of the world. "In all of these cases, IBM has a significant amount of research activity going on and some early stage involvement in making cities smarter and better," he said.

IBM's first prediction calls for cities with healthier immune systems. "Given their population density, cities will remain hotbeds of communicable disease. But in the future, public health officials will know precisely when, where and how diseases are spreading -- even which neighborhoods will be affected next."

The prediction is based on the expectation that more health information will be shared among health officials, which will allow greater opportunities for tracking diseases and knowing where to put health care, explained Campbell.

"We believe very strongly that cities will become healthier as a result of the analytics that come into play, allowing us to map and analyze and predict the spread of infectious diseases and understand more about them," he said.