Singapore: Smart City or Smart Nation? Daniel Kruimel
Friday 19th August, 2016
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Presentation Notes
Good afternoon and welcome to the final session of SID2016. I’d just like to start by saying thank you to the organising committee for putting on the event today. I was on the organising committee of this event 6 years ago and I know the immense effort that goes into making this event a success year in year out. It is an absolute privilige to be giving a keynote address at this event and I hope you find the next 30 minutes insightful.
I’m sure many of you in this room have been to Singapore or at least know a little bit about the nation. Singapore is a small island which was granted independence from Malaysia 51 years ago. Despite its small stature and limited natural resources, Singapore has managed to carve out its own rightful place on the global stage. A lot of this has come from government policies. Lee Kuan Yew, the first Prime Minister of Singapore (who passed away last year) has been commended for his policies and vision in shaping Singapore to the nation it is today. Singapore now serves as a beacon for the rest of SE Asia to look to, along with many other countries / cities worldwide.
What exactly defines a ‘smart city?’ Or is this just a buzz word used to generate interest? Australian Government Smart Cities Plan released in 2016. Sets out the Australian Government’s vision for it’s cities and the plan to maximise their potential. Divided into three pillars – smart investment, smart policy and smart technology. �Australia smart cities plan talks about investing in public transport to improve connectivity and reduce congestion, increasing housing supply near job opportunities and transport connections to improve housing affordability and strive towards the concept of “30 minute cities.” But how is this achieved? They also mention leveraging open and real time data. “Sharing anonymised data from our cities will make urban problems and solutions more contestable – an essential platform for innovation” India’s Smart Cities Mission – mission to develop 100 cities over the country to make them citizen friend and sustainable. The Infocomm Development Authority in Singapore (IDA) defines Smart Nation as: “People and business are empowered through increased access to data”
Going back to IDA’s definition of “People and business are empowered through increased access to data” Despite being a small definition, there are three key components outlined. The first of these is data. Data is quite a broad term, what does this encompass? Where does this data come from? How is it generated? The second key them is access. Once data has been collected, how is this then distributed? And how is it updated? What about live data streams? And finally, people. The Singapore government realises that it is not technology at the heart of their vision – it is their citizens.
Singapore President Tony Tan’s government priorities prominently feature Mapping
…the Ministry of Law will develop a high resolution, 3D national topographic map to support
• Urban Planning
• Flood Control
• Civil Aviation
• Singapore Land Authority (SLA) leads the geospatial component of this vision
A Vision for Singapore - Data
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Presentation Notes
- When president Tony Tan opened the new session of parliament in May 2014, GIS featured prominently as he outlined his government’s priorities for the rest of the team - Seven different ministries currently have agenda items aimed at making Singapore a livable city and endearing home With the Ministry of Law to develop a high resolution, 3D national topographic map to improve likes of urban planning, flood control and civil aviation SLA, a statutory board under the Ministry of Law is leading the geospatial component of this vision of Smart City
A smart city will allow Singapore to develop solutions to tackle urban problems more effectively and efficiently. Smart Cities of the future will require a robust 3D land information system, to organise the increasing amount and richness of geospatial information …geospatial data are the building blocks of a Smart City.
SLA chief executive, Vincent Hong, Switzerland, May 2014
A Vision for Singapore - Data
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Presentation Notes
SLA chief executive Vincent Hong spoke in Geneva around this time on how a smart city would allow Singapore to develop solutions to tackle problems more effectively and efficiently and noted that geospatial data are the building blocks of a Smart City. Smart Cities of the future would require a robust 3D land information system to organise the increasing amount and richness of geospatial information I’d like to highlight a few quotes from a featured article in the Wall Street Journal earlier this year in May. “Yet the government also says it isn’t certain what kinds of applications might be possible once the system is built” “About a dozen trial projects have been launched so far, with many targeted for wider implementation. The total cost is undisclosed.” “When such huge volumes of data are collected and cross-referenced, experts say, applications emerge that are difficult to imagine until the material is available in the first place. “It is a little bit of a build-and-they-will-come approach,” If an Australian government tried to do this, they would face some serious criticism! SLA have a great tagline of “Limited Land, Unlimited Space.”
SLA’s first step in developing the 3D National Map was a project entitled the “Provision of Aerial LiDAR and Imagery Mapping Services and the Creation, Delivery and Integration of 3D Digital Models of Singapore.” To simplify this, we have dubbed this as “Phase 1.” This project entailed an aerial survey of Singapore incorporating LiDAR and imagery – both oblique and nadir. Once data had been collected, the next stage was to produce the products. The first of these was a high resolution DTM, which has since been disseminated to a number of other agencies and used for a variety of purposes, such as flood modelling. The next was to produce building models, in CityGML format. CityGML is a data exchange format and very popular in Europe. As opposed to other models, CityGML’s advantage is in the schema developed and level of attribution. This allows each building to have a unique identifier and have it’s various parts isolated (i.e. WallSurface, Roof Surface etc). For people performing analysis on models, this opens up a new spectrum. They are no longer confined to just geometry, but can start drilling down further based on attribution. �E.g. – Solar potential of all roof surfaces in Singapore.
The Smart Nation initiative adopts a people-centric approach by rallying citizens, industries, research institutions, and the government to co-create innovative solutions. Government agencies facilitate this by sharing extensive real-time data in the public domain. This way, anyone can access the data resources and participate in generating solutions to real challenges. A variety of avenues are available for people to contribute ideas and feedback towards building a better Singapore.
A Vision for Singapore - Access
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Presentation Notes
Singapore Smart Nation Co-creating Solutions with Anyone for Everyone� The Smart Nation initiative adopts a people-centric approach by rallying citizens, industries, research institutions, and the government to co-create innovative solutions.� Government agencies facilitate this by sharing extensive real-time data in the public domain. This way, anyone can access the data resources and participate in generating solutions to real challenges.� A variety of avenues are available for people to contribute ideas and feedback towards building a better Singapore. The SG Government funds a number of programs around smart nation, including frequent calls for people (organisations, researchers etc) to submit proposals for funding.
One of the flagship projects in Smart Nation is the highly publicised Virtual Singapore. Virtual Singapore is a collaborative 3D City Model platform. It is important to note that the 3D Map itself is not Virtual Singapore – but forms the base data for the platform. �Virtual Singapore refers to the actual use of the platform, once data is loaded into it. Web based platform being developed by a company from France called Dassault Systemes.
In this slide I have a picture from the recent Word Cities Summit in Singapore, where “Virtual Yuhua” was showcased. This featured the Virtual Singapore platform focused around a small focus area called Yuhua in Singapore’s west. In the picture, we have one of the young modellers from the Singaporean team called Wei Zhong. We have a team of about 25 in Singapore that I am in charge of – a scary concept! Wei Zhong is using the interactive display here to visualize the Yuhua precinct. As each building is an independent model, it can be selected and attribution viewed. From solar energy output to information about the hawker market down in the void deck.
• Services for capture and processing of 5,500km road network in Singapore
• Production of 3D Models in CityGML Format
• 6 Companies submitted proposals
• One Australian company (AAM)
• Tender awarded in June 2015
Presenter
Presentation Notes
At the beginning of 2015, the Singapore Land Authority called a tender for what is known as ‘Phase 2.’ This project followed on from the Phase 1 project, which was the airborne survey (ortho imagery, oblique and LiDAR) to produce terrain and building models. Phase 2 was to conduct a mobile LiDAR survey over Singapore’s road network to produce Transportation and City Furniture models, along with point cloud and imagery coverage. Quite a unique project in that it required the supply of an MLS system, along with operation. Generally these two components would be undertaken by different companies.
As many of you know, my beginnings were here in Adelaide as a Land Surveyor. The fundamentals that I learned here are still being applied to my day to day work.
As of yesterday (I updated this 24 hours ago while I was still in Singapore – scary fact I know) 487,478 panorama images have been generated over Singapore’s road network. Each panorama image is generated from 6 individually captured planar images. The images have been collected at an interval of 20m and each one is approx 4mb in size.
Over 579,549 million LiDAR points have been collected over Singapore. The scanner used is a Riegl VMX-450 twin head scanner, with each head capable of measuring 550 Mhz a second.
