Being one of the most tech-savvy nations in the world, Singapore turns to technology to address various municipal issues.
Singapore, traditionally known as “Lion City,” is a small nation with limited resources. But the country has established itself as a stellar “Little Dragon” of Asia, with 2014 gross domestic product of US$390 billion and per capita gross national income of $69,168.
That however does not exempt the city-state from problems facing municipalities across the globe. These include rising population, crime rate, as well as issues related to housing, traffic, and energy utilization.
Intelligence via technology
Being one of the most tech-savvy nations in the world, Singapore turns to technology to address the above-mentioned issues. For example, sensors for air quality, rainfall, and flash flood warnings are installed to help authorities achieve better monitoring and management.
Video surveillance also plays an important role in driving Singapore’s smart city efforts. Throughout country, one can find cameras that are higher in resolution, from HD/full HD to eventually 4K. Video analytics, meanwhile, can be particularly useful, helping administrators determine the number of people in a given place, recognize license plates, and detect potential criminal activities that are about to happen.
Use case: Safe City Test Bed
An example of Singapore’s smart city initiatives is the yearlong Safe City Test Bed project launched in 2013 by the country’s Safety and Security Industry Program Office (SSIPO), which is a strategic alliance between the Economic Development Board and the Singapore Ministry of Home Affairs to promote the safety and security industry in Singapore.
Under the initiative, SSIPO carved out four precincts in Singapore and selected four consortia to work on each precinct. The four were led by Accenture, NEC, AGT International, and Airbus Defense and Space.
Accenture tested its safe city solution at the Marina Bay precinct. According to the company, the solution entails a centralized analytics platform that enables data-sharing among different government agencies in their efforts to monitor and control crowds. NEC, another participant, used Orchard Road as the test bed to try out its technologies such as facial recognition video analytics and cross-site monitoring.
The first phase of the test bed initiative has completed, and according to NEC, the date of phase two of the project has yet to be announced.
Smart buildings set trend
Aside from smart city projects, smart buildings are another component that makes Singapore smart. From commercial office buildings to international hotels and villas, owners are seeking to achieve energy savings, efficiency and productivity, overall security and situation awareness, and comfort and ease of use for tenants.
One example is the Marina Bay Sands Integrated Resort, where CEM’s access control system is integrated with the hotel’s central control and monitoring system to achieve better management efficiency. “The high-level interface allowed CEM to send water leak state to the central control system. If a water leak is detected, the CEM system would send alarms to the central control. This was an important issue due to the fact that the hotel has a roof top pool. Therefore any water leaks could result in serious consequences,” CEM said in a news release.
To make this possible, a seamless integration between security and building management systems is required. “The BMS feeds information to security systems for security and safety situations, while security systems trigger the BMS to control ambience conditions,” said Patrick Lim, Director of Group Sales and Marketing at Ademco Security Group. “In many cases, we see the security system enhancing the building in a more holistic manner.”
Smart and Smarter
A city state with limited resources, Singapore nevertheless impresses with its smart use of technology to achieve various purposes, in the process pushing security players to find more non-security yet value-added applications such as crowd control, traffic control, and energy savings. Already a smart country, Singapore’s effort to become even smarter via technology is indeed an example that other countries can learn from.