Slowly but steadily, the trend for using smart products is picking up in
Malaysia, as end users leverage the powers of the internet of things (IoT) to achieve various security and management objectives.
Smart home and building
More and more, the
smart building and home concept is seeing growth in Malaysia. “For us, we have a residential solution, whereby if you visit me, I send you a QR code to your phone. You just go to the guardhouse and show the QR code, and the gate or barrier will open for you to go in, since I already registered you as a visitor. So it’s convenient,” said Yap Vooi Kuen, Director of
ELID.
And developers and end users are also eyeing smart buildings for efficiency gains and energy conservation. “Starting this year a lot of the new buildings will be smart buildings, and a lot of people will start promoting smart buildings,” said Redzwan Rahmat, Group MD of SR Two Technologies. “But it’s not going to change entirely from the old concept to the new concept entirely in a single night. They are going to change it step by step. First they are going to start with air conditioning, how to manage your OPEX, how to manage your facility, and these kinds of things.”
Yap Vooi Kuen, Director, ELID
Smart city
Meanwhile, municipal authorities in Malaysia are working with manufacturers to deploy smart city solutions to
reduce traffic congestion and make cities more livable. “We started deploying in Johor last year. We have the CCTV, we have the wireless infrastructure, we have the CCTV software and the network. It’s a complete ecosystem, including IoT gadgets by our sister company R3,” said Rahmat.
“Now every Malaysian city and town is already looking into smart city, and it's going to be a huge market. It’s inevitable because what happens is cities are becoming modern. Kuala Lumpur and other municipalities are becoming top cities in the region, so they have to be smart. Very soon they'll be 100 percent smart. They have to be,” said Shaji N.M, Group Chairman of
Prisma Bytes, which offers various smart city solutions that help municipal officials detect and respond to different incidents, from a rise in floor water to someone opening a manhole cover.
A major issue that can be addressed via smart city solutions is traffic, and Malaysian cities are increasingly utilizing intelligent transport systems (ITS). “We already have ITS projects in Kuala Lumpur,” said Huckel Zheng, MD of
Hikvision Malaysia. “They want to know if certain roads are congested, or how many cars pass by a particular intersection in a given hour. So we give them the solution that helps reduce traffic by way of traffic flow analysis and self-adaptive signal control, among others.”
AI
K. K. Lim, Director,
ALMA Technology
Finally, Malaysia is also seriously looking at
artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the accuracy and intelligence of systems. “AI and video analytics are one of those systems that we use nowadays in commercial areas as well as in industrial areas, also it’s moving to the housing area. So this is one of the areas that our clients and we ourselves feel is essential, and it’s helping us solve and deter things from happening,” said Dato’Sri Haji Mustapa bin Haji Ali, President of the
Malaysia Chapter of Asia Pacific Security Association.
“For AI, last year it was just a gimmick, but this year we see real implementation,” said K. K. Lim, Director of
ALMA Technology. “It includes license plate recognition and facial recognition deployed in closed communities, for example industrial parks and office buildings, where you don’t need your card – the system will recognize you’re part of the entity.”