Singapore's gone through a remarkable transformation from British colonial trading port 200 years ago to first world economy in a little over 50 years. Once again, change is in hand with Prime Minister Lee Lung setting out a mandate for the country's next evolution, becoming the world's first smart nation. But how will that vision become a reality? I'm Jason Pomemeroy and in this episode of Smart Cities 2.0, I'm back home in Singapore. [Music] [Music] Singapore, home to over 5.5 million people and the third densest city in the world. The young nation has achieved stunning economic growth in just over 50 years. Its thriving port has made it a major economic hub in Asia. But success comes with its own set of problems. Now Singapore is aiming to solve these urban problems by taking its worldleading deployment of data systems to the next level. It wants to become the world's first smart nation. A bold vision even for wealthy techsavvy Singapore. No matter how big or small, rich or poor, a country aspiring to be a smart nation faces the same challenge. How to ensure the advantages of smart technology and planning can benefit every stratum of society. As chief executive of Gubek, the government agency tasked with developing the smart nation infrastructure and applications in Singapore, Jacqueline Poe understands better than anyone the challenges and the rewards of making Singapore a true garden is smart. But I think there's a lot more that we can do in Singapore. Yeah, we've always emphasized that being, you know, a smart city or a smart nation that benefits citizens is very much based on uh the kind of data that is most useful. This may be big or it may be limited in size, but if it's the right data, yes, it's something that can solve an epidemic, prevent crime, improve health. Some of the things that we talk about the most of all is how to really work in a manner that engages communities that engages citizens and pulls together the collective wisdom uh of our people. It's what we call civic hacking. Finding solutions by the community for the community can yield huge benefits. So how is Singapore evolving its national database to improve Singaporean lives? Well, for one thing, by spending a cool $52 million to create the country's avatar in cyerspace, Virtual Singapore. How does Virtual Singapore contribute to the smart nation of Singapore? We want to create a digital twin of the physical Singapore. We want the virtual Singapore to be as close a representation of the physical Singapore. A lot of things we see and we discuss here we could implement experiment in virtual Singapore before we move it out to actual physical Singapore. City administrators use virtual Singapore as a planning tool to map disaster evacuation and first responder routes, blueprint new urban planning and development schemes and integrate cuttingedge technologies such as automated cars into Singapore's physical landscape. So what do we have here? I can see that it's a virtual model um and I can move it around but tell me a bit more about what level of detail goes into this model. Right. So this area that you're looking at is a place called Yeiwa which is actually an estate where HDB is looking into uh renewing the estate with smart technology. HDB is the housing development board the government agency responsible for the public housing that over 80% of Singaporeans live in. If you were to want to go from point A to point B, it tells you that you have to travel about 270 m and it takes about 3 minutes. But if you are a handicap person and you need to use a wheelchair, you need to travel 1 kilometer. My goodness. Over two traffic light. Yes. To reach the community center that is opposite. This can be a positive tool to kind of show how you can be enhancing and designing better for the disabled to be able to move with ease from point one to point 2. Exactly. So what is good is this is a collaborative platform. It looks cluttered now. So I remove some trees. Okay. And that's where LTA works together with agencies and build overhead bridge with RAM. The LTA or Land Transport Authority is another government agency that spearheads mobility developments in Singapore. I can see how these agencies can use Virtual Singapore to identify infrastructural strengths and weaknesses and build on the high-tech services that Singapore already provides its people. Today, citizens can update and renew their personal information like their passports and even collect them without necessarily meeting anyone. seems trivial but nevertheless important. Another initiative is data.gov.sg, an online public portal that provides solutions that will actually enhance people's lives. For instance, freeing up hospital beds for people. What this demonstrates is the government's push to embrace technology to actually make people's lives on the ground better. The government has actively sought out private sector partners to help in the smart nation push. One such collaborator is Japanese tech giant Fujitsu. Researchers have utilized transport data to devise an app to reward commuters who ride after rush hour. Hurry or Dwell is the app. And here's how it works. A prompt offers a discount on a drink or a sandwich if you delay your departure to ease the rush hour traffic. Rewards vary according to the length of the delay. A commuter willing to travel very late might qualify for an entire meal. In addition, Fujitsu has also developed city monitoring software possessing smart vehicular, facial, and clothing recognition algorithms. So, what do we have here? Here we have the city surveillance demo. What we are trying to do here is to use uh video analytics with what we call deep learning technology. Okay. That allows us to behave similar to our eyes. Okay. So it can recognize different kinds of objects. Right. Yeah. So how does that work here? So for example, I have certain uh video footages here. All right. And I can create some kind of search condition to find video footages of certain scenes. So for example here, let me show you. All right. Let's say I want to find videos that have a person who's in red. All right. So, what I do is just I state the condition there. I do a search. Oh, wow. All right. And then it finds all the past recorded video that has a red person in the video footage. I get that technology, but how does this enhance people's lives? Well, uh it there could be many different types of functions that that is being used here. I mean, we can use it for public safety. We can use it for foreign seat search. We can use it for loss and found. Yes. So in any of the smart nation or even smart city kind of initiatives, we can apply this technology to help improve uh productivity, resource utilization, safety, congestion management and so forth. Singapore is aiming to lead the world in using technology to create better lives and build a smarter nation. How far can it go? And is there a danger of going too far? As it embarks on its quest to become a smart nation, Singapore is relying on its already impressive infrastructure. A seamless road and highway network that connects the nation, a mobile penetration rate of 150% with 88% of households having internet access and strong educational and research institutions in the sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics. There's much less pain than there is gain in Singapore's transition. In addition to adopting a slew of information and communication technologies, Singapore is positioning itself in the world as a living lab to smart ideas, smart concepts, smart technologies. I check in with my friend Saskia to hear what she thinks about this proposition. Hi Saska. Jason, do you think Singapore is a world laboratory for testing smart city ideas? We think of Singapore increasingly that way certainly but broader than just the smart. Smart you know have has a certain kind of meaning. It links it to the digital but the smart can actually involve many other technologies. So I think Singer I think of Singapore as a city that has deployed particular forms of intelligence uh across every part of the city. That is the amazing thing about Singapore. So one thinks about water systems, plant systems, not just the digital. But is Singapore doing enough to resist the urge of trying to over plan everything? Planning has lost some of the positives that may have been associated with it say 20 years ago. We have lost our innocence and we know that you cannot fully plan you know a city but you can enable a city with its particularities and you know the the cultures that are embedded in that city and the needs that a city might have. You can enable that via planning and via all kinds of other kinds of interventions. Always insightfulness Saska. Thank you very much. Take care. Saskia has a point. Obviously, meticulous planning is needed on route to becoming a smart nation, but the concept of planning itself might need to be reinvisioned. Old style top- down planning might end up stifling what it's meant to achieve. The current thinking involves enabling the people planning from the ground up. It's an idea that's added a new term to Singapore's future planning lexicon, the responsive city. Thank you very much for inviting me here. Now tell me what's the difference between a responsive city and a smart city? Well, we all know smart cities and responsive city is the next generation plus people. People people in the center with smart city technology. Today many cities want to be smart. There are smart city programs all over the world. But Singapore is the first city that actually uses responsive cities as a research project. With smart city and big data technology, city planners can predict the behaviors of certain parts of the city very precisely and use those insights to build a better city. So we see here the part of the city, Tanjang Pagad, the new part being generated by computer program. You see the controls here at the bottom and first the street network is generated then the plots are generated and then the buildings are generated and then you can interact with this generated plot size and the buildings and move them manually. So it's a direct interaction between something that is generated from rules and something that you as a designer as a citizen as a planner want to change. All this big data can clearly create a direct impact on the design of the future smart city. But as Dr. Schmidt reminds me, it's imperative not to lose sight of what's at the heart of a smart nation. Smart cities are known for smart mobility, smart buildings, smart infrastructure. But where are the people? This is at the moment a big question because smart cities came from technologydriven approaches. But now we see we need to integrate the people of the city, the citizens to enhance the systems. Integrating people into the smart city drive essentially means making the city more livable for its people. And one cuttingedge Singapore development is using technology to create a more livable, sustainable township. Located in the western region of Singapore, Tangga Forest Town is part of the government's efforts to transform the west into a commercial and residential hub. Ah, Dr. Wong. Hi, Jason. Lovely seeing you again. Thank you very much for inviting me here. So, tell me a bit about the smart features that we see in this particular smart town. One of the technology is this smart planning tool which we call it the integrated environmental modeler. Okay. It helps with channeling wind flow. Okay. Way we orientate our buildings, the way we spot areas that are potential hot spots, we put more greenery there, materials to cool it down. It not only helps to make the town more efficient, but it also helps to reduce urban heat island effects. And that's not all. Tangar Forest Town incorporates energy efficient lighting with built-in sensors that track movement and foot traffic using the data to automate the light levels in each area. These energy efficient lights alone can save more than 40% of energy. Tangga is just an opportunity for us to introduce smart solution right at the onset at the town level and if it works what we hope to do is slowly see if it makes sense and people liked it, we can replicate to the rest of HTBates. Fantastic. Singapore is in an enviable position given its vision and ability to plan long term. This little red dot is already keeping its eye out for the next big thing. After the break, I'm going to be looking at Smart Cities 2.0, the future city. Singapore is certainly using its tiny size to think big. It's pushing to be the world's first smart nation. But how do you create better environments for people to live, work, and play and move so freely? Ultimately, how do you go from a smart nation to a smart nation 2.0? The Future Cities Laboratory is a collaboration between Swiss University ETHZurich and the National Research Foundation. At the Future Cities Laboratory, they're searching for answers by asking people to spend a few minutes living in the future. [Music] What you see here is Chungaru redesigned in an active mobility friendly manner. Different types of bicycle infrastructure, but we take it one step further and we put you in virtual reality and cycle through this environment. It's called bike to the future and it's the brainchild of the future cities laboratory's team of experts in engineering, transport, and computer science. The concept is simple. Instead of planning a future Singapore on paper, turn your plan into virtual reality and then ask people what they like and don't like about living in it. Oh my goodness. Sort of a focus group for the future. We want to know what would make people use a bicycle in Singapore. And there are several challenges. Safety and comfort of people. Tell me what you see. Walking I can see that there is a clear cycle lane and I feel safe. There are what I would call traffic calming measures. More of a pedestrianfriendly and bicycle friendly environment. Wow. And there you go. Welcome in Singful Park. So incredibly immersive. And now you're back at our parking lot in And now I'm back. Tongaru. Wow. So would you use a bicycle here in this environment? I would use a bicycle. What's quite fascinating is that I felt so immersed with this technology. Obviously, design plays a huge part in trying to take the car off the street to encourage cyclists and uh pedestrian uh environment. So, um thank you very much for that. Immersive is a key word in the future city laboratory's approach to urban planning research. Another is integration, meaning the integration of massive amounts of data to create a holistic portrait of what is and could be. As the title suggests, we're interested in future cities. We have social scientists. We have geographers. And one of the great things about working here, of course, is that we all work together on really complex and challenging questions to do with urbanization, sustainability, and future cities. Fantastic. Now, tell me what you're doing here. I mean, it looks intriguing that you got this kind of slightly low tech pen, but a very, very high tech device. Tell me a bit about this. It's a kind of interface tool. It's effectively augmented drawing. Okay. So if I trace over a particular region and I'll tell you about where that is in a moment, it brings a certain kind of land footprint and data with it. So there's population, we have agricultural data like the yield of of the crops, we have the calories that are produced by these green regions, uh we have housing costs, we have road costs, construction costs and so on. So you're really using sort of technology to its limit to be able to kind of you're very very interesting data and I'm assuming that you're able to kind of map out a variety of of different scenarios and then design upon those scenarios. Douglas Adams, the great British novelist who wrote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, once said, "We're stuck with technology when all we really want is stuff that works." But in the wake of global technological advancement, shouldn't we just take stock and say where is it all going? Let's find out more from the man who has his finger firmly on the pulse of Singapore's information technology movement. Mr. Kung. Mr. Kung is at the frontier of creating stuff that works and in training people to use that stuff. He's dedicated to bringing Smart Nation Singapore into being. So what does smart mean in Singapore? Many countries in the world look to Singapore and say that we have the best chance of being that smart nation. So we just need to make sure that we deliver on what they expect us to deliver. We need to train students to have an open mind, be able to understand business challenges and also be able to code, be able to create things, be able to use machines, be able to be comfortable having computational level thinking, creating that whole concept that you can create things. If you see a problem, you can play your part to solve it. to learn. Students here do. It central campus has an aircraft hanger. Students learn all about aircraft maintenance. Students acquire skills virtually using an interactive virtual reality environment called IQ. So the I cube really is what we call a 3D four-wall fully immersive experience. Today it has developed 19 different scenarios and it ranges from of course aerospace that you'll be seeing later. Uh we do have a marine scenarios. We have a scenario where we get students through what a waterproof culture process is like and there's one interesting one. We have one scenario where our forestry students learn to arrange flower in the digital world. Now I'm a green architect and I like having green fingers and exploring greenery. So I want to step outside of my comfort zone and do something aeronautically related. These funky looking shades will transport me directly onto the tarmac. And it looks like there is a an aircraft coming. Yes, correct. The aircraft is actually uh coming back from a flight. This is remarkable. I mean, it's actually quite scary. It's really coming up close. Yeah. Okay. Uh it stops. It stops. I just need you to hold on to this controller and you're able to control uh various aspects of the simulation. Okay. So, I see get chocks from hanger. So, press next. Okay. Okay. So, uh, there are the chocks. Once you see the green, all you have to do is press and hold. Press and hold. Okay, chocks in place. Hopefully, plane's not going to move. Right. Confirm the placement of the chocks. Press E again. Uh, button. Yes. Which area the safety zone? Okay. So, we want to try and see what happens. All right, let's do that. Okay, let's try. 30. Oh my goodness. You see that we could actually create different scenarios and scenarios that can be Yeah. students are actually allowed to make mistakes during this simulation. Yes. And they learn through incidental learning in this case. D minus must try harder. Okay. And look at that. Okay. I have failed. Try better next time. Yeah. I'll stick to my day job. [Laughter] [Music] A common criticism of smart cities is that they're only really for the privileged who actually enjoy the technology in the city center. So what happens to the rest of the people living in the outlying lands? What we see in Singapore is this notion of a smart nation. Meaning that the technology and all the smartness is brought to the masses coupled with the fact that it's a center for research institutions to come and provide influence and knowledge to Singapore. What we see is a living laboratory that can also be exported overseas. That knowledge will hopefully then transform global cities into smart cities. And that's what makes Singapore particularly attractive. [Music] [Applause] Oh yeah.