Transcriber: Sally Yang Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
Do you know that today, in the world,
half of the population actually live in cities?
So, cities are very important to us.
But cities also give us a lot of challenges,
especially the architect planners.
Because most of them face a growing population.
Not only is the population growing, but it is also ageing.
And people continue to have aspirations for a better quality of life.
And as the cities grow,
we would have to develop more infrastructure and services for them,
and we have to make sure that these services work.
And, with climate change, we have to encourage people to use less energy
so that we reduce carbon emissions.
So, cities seek solutions to address these challenges.
How do we deal with them?
Well, many cities are starting to adopt smart technology
to improve our environment and our daily living.
But what is smart technology?
Everybody talks about being 'smart'.
Well, in very simple form,
it is really harnessing information and communications technology,
the Internet of Things,
and getting insights into data,
to actually develop smart applications
that make day-to-day living for us comfortable.
It has been projected that by 2025,
we will have at least 88 smart cities in the world.
What about Singapore?
Well, the prime minister has said:
'Our vision is for Singapore to be a smart nation.
A nation where people live meaningful and fulfilled lives,
enabled seamlessly by technology,
offering exciting opportunities for all.'
Note that it's really about people and not about just the technology.
But are we ready to be 'smart'?
Well, I think we're pretty much on the journey.
We're quite wired up.
90 percent of our homes have broadband,
and we're going to bring fibre to every home.
And Singapore has one of the highest smartphone penetration rates in the world,
at about 85 percent.
So, we are on the journey.
But what is a smart nation?
I'd just like to illustrate with an example of a public housing town,
close to my heart.
And I call it 'the Heartlands'.
Why is it 'the Heartlands'?
Because it houses 83 percent of the population,
and many of you and I live in HDB towns, in about a million flats.
So, what is a smart town?
The smart town really functions like the human body.
We have all the buildings in there where activities take place,
like the muscles in our body.
We have greenery and parks,
like our lungs,
that help to cleanse the air for us
and give us oxygen to breathe.
And we have all the roads,
just like the veins and arteries in our bodies
that move the traffic, the people and the goods.
And you know, our body has the five senses.
And the senses send [information] to our brain,
so it senses what happens in the environment,
[which] tells our brain how to get the body to adapt,
whether it's hot or cold.
So, if you add a sensor layer onto a town, it collects data,
and insights from this data can help the town to continue to learn and adapt.
And from this, we can develop smart applications for day-to-day living.
As an architect planner,
actually, I planned and built many of the towns that you live in.
And I would very much like
to build a smart town that is liveable, efficient, sustainable, and safe for you.
We are going to look at 'smart' in four areas.
Smart planning,
smart environment,
smart estate services,
and smart living.
What is smart planning?
As an architect planner, I love this part
because it helps me to design a better living environment for you.
Now, what is smart planning?
Basically, the first thing I do is to collect all the data about a town -
the buildings, the roads, the parks -
and I put it into the computer.
And I'll also collect a lot of information about energy use and waste,
for example.
And with this information,
I can develop a three-dimensional map of Singapore in the computer.
Now, what do I do with this information?
Well, I can do a lot.
I can do a computer model that simulates the windflows through the town.
We're in the tropics, we love the wind.
We're not in Chicago.
Now, if you look at this diagram,
the colours that are yellow and orange mean that the windflows are pretty good.
The ones in blue mean it doesn't move so much.
So, when we did the first cut of Punggol Eco-Town,
this was the pattern of the windflow.
And then we adjusted the buildings,
we moved the parks around,
and then you find that the windflows improve.
You see more of the orange and the red colours,
which means you get a cooler and a better air quality through the town.
Computer simulations can do many things.
We can do it at a town level,
or we can do it at a precinct level,
and we can even do it at a building level.
So, welcome to Punggol Northshore.
It's a precinct we've just designed,
which I've just launched for sale.
I don't know how many of you applied for a flat there,
but I highly recommend it.
It's a great place to live in.
(Laughter)
Now, similarly, when we first did the design,
we looked at the windflows through the town.
And at a town level, we also made adjustments to the design -
I moved things around, cut holes in the buildings -
and you can see that the windflows have improved,
particularly in the neighbourhood centre.
We wanted a lot of natural ventilation
so that we can minimise the use of air conditioning.
Now, computer simulations can also help you in many ways.
It can do a shadow analysis of the town.
Here, you see the shadows moving from morning till night.
Why is it important?
Well, it helps the architect and the planner
to decide where to put the park,
the outdoor dining areas,
the outdoor plazas,
playgrounds,
and my childcare centre - I like to put them in the shade
so that the children can be out the whole day.
The computer can also tell you the solar irradiance in a town.
How much sun actually falls on the surfaces of the town
and on the buildings.
And why is this useful?
Well, it helps me to decide, for example, where there's moderate sunshine.
I'm going to put the roof gardens there.
And where there's a lot of sunshine,
that's where I put my solar panels.
We've talked about solar panels.
And it is very effective.
All this information helps the architect to design the town,
not only aesthetically,
but also to ensure that it is functional.
So this is the waterfront town.
Quite nice.
You can start applying for it.
(Laughter)
Now, we can add a layer of sensors to the town.
A layer of sensors that tells you about the humidity,
the heat, the windflows.
And all this data that I collect can go back into the computer systems
to validate the assumptions and make them even more accurate.
But more importantly, [the data] can be used in many ways.
For example, in my neighbourhood centre, I have these huge fans.
Now, I hope that these fans can be triggered.
When I monitor the humidity and the heat,
they would be triggered when it hits a certain threshold level.
But that is a greenfield site.
What about old towns?
So, welcome to Yuhua, Jurong, an old estate.
What we did a couple of years ago
is to try to introduce a lot of sustainability initiatives
into this estate to make it greener,
which means more cycling, more solar panels for clean energy.
We put in rainwater harvesting systems.
But can I make it even smarter so that they're more effective?
So, for example,
we have put a lot of solar panels on hundreds of buildings in HDB blocks.
You may not see [them] because you didn't climb up to the roof.
Now, we put in sensors to all the solar panels
and we track the energy that is collected.
And we know immediately when the panel is not working,
because it would not be collecting energy,
and we can fix it.
But do you know that such data collected can do many things?
It can even tell you the weather condition.
For example, if many of the solar panels are not collecting a lot of energy,
it might mean that over that town, it is cloudy, or it is actually raining.
So, it is a proxy to the meteorological station.
Another service that we see a lot in town -
an estate service that we're very familiar with -
is the lighting along your corridor.
How many of you walk into a toilet and [the light] suddenly switches on,
and you get a shock?
From dark to light, right?
Well, smart sensors allow a person to walk along the corridor,
it can even predict where you're going,
and then the lighting level picks up.
And when you have passed it, the lighting level dims again.
And you save energy.
And the data collected is useful
because if, along the corridor, after 11pm every night,
very few people actually walk there,
the system is smart enough to learn the pattern
and to reduce the brightness of the light
and save energy.
Another estate service we are all very familiar with is ...
the lift.
We have 24,000 lifts in HDB towns.
And we monitor them every day.
Now, you may not know this,
but we move the lifts when you are sleeping.
There's no ghost. We move it.
(Laughter)
The reason being that we are testing it to make sure it works
when you take the lift the next day.
Now, of course, when the lift breaks down,
we will get a signal and we have to go and fix it.
But, you know, with the new sensors,
maybe you can even monitor the vibration and the heat generation from the lift.
And they can even predict a potential failure
before it even happens so that we can go and fix it first.
So, that's wonderful, right?
To be able to predict.
Now, this is a map of Singapore.
If you look closely, you'll think there are a lot of ants running around.
Now, actually, this is real time.
It shows you where all the taxis are moving around in Singapore.
But why do we want to collect such data?
It's great data for transport planners
because by looking at this data,
the transport planner knows the road condition
and where the congestion is.
Now, we can push this data to you, to all your smartphones.
I'm sure all of you have smartphones.
And you'll know straightaway which road to avoid.
Going home from NTU later to wherever you came from.
You have your Ez-link card, right?
Every time you go up the bus, you tap the Ez-link card.
Now, that data's very useful
because when we collect that data, we can tell you which bus is crowded.
So, when you're waiting for your bus,
on your handphone, you will be able to find out
that this bus that's coming is going to be crowded,
so you might want to take another bus, or change your route.
So, such information and data are very useful.
Next, I talked about smart living.
Closer to home.
By 2030, we will have double the people who are over 65 years old
from 450,000 to about 900,000.
In 1970,
about 13 people supported one person who was over 65 years old.
By 2030, there are only two of us
supporting a parent who's over 65 years old.
And with dual-income families,
it means that many of us may not be home and our parents are left alone.
Well, meet two of my residents.
This is Doris, and her mum is 78 years old.
And Doris has to go to work.
She has to cater to the family, and she takes care of her mum.
But she's always worried because her mum once had a fall at home.
So, she's very worried when she's at work.
So, what we did was we pilot-tested a system called SEMAS -
Smart Elderly Monitoring Alert System - in her home.
So, what we did was we went into her home
and we fixed a couple of sensors throughout the home.
And what this sensor does is it monitors the movements of her mum.
But it doesn't just monitor.
It learns her pattern over a few weeks,
for example, the time that she wakes up.
Now, if this pattern is broken - it becomes very irregular,
or there's no movement at home -
what happens is that a signal is automatically sent to Doris's handphone
when she's at work,
and Doris can quickly call home and check if her mum is alright,
or to alert the neighbour to knock on the door.
And I think this gives Doris a lot of peace of mind.
So, with an ageing population,
such smart solutions are actually very useful.
Another application is telehealth.
When you're at work, and mum has no one to send her to the hospital,
she may not need to go to the hospital.
She can be home and do her physiotherapy
with a nurse watching her and training her
to make sure that she's doing it correctly.
She can do this in the comfort of her living room.
And in fact, her heartbeat and blood pressure can be monitored.
And so, it is very convenient.
But, of course, if she needs to go to the hospital,
the nurse would tell her, "You need to come into the hospital."
So, I think another very useful application
is the home energy management system.
I think everyone is quite familiar with this.
It tells you how much energy your appliances are using at home.
But the smart solutions can even alert you when they reach a certain usage.
It can even switch off your devices when you're not at home.
And do you know that it can even do this?
When you go to bed at night, and you turn on the air conditioner,
a lot of you like it to be very cool.
I don't know what temperature - 18, 20, or 21 [degree Celcius]?
But it uses a lot of energy.
So, what happens is, after you're asleep, very quietly,
the device is going to raise the temperature of your air conditioner,
and you won't even know it.
And therefore, you save energy.
So, I think, all these applications can make our daily living better.
But, of course, we'll have to select the right technology.
We have to make it very friendly.
And, frankly, the SEMAS system I showed you -
actually, Doris's mum found it very easy to use.
And, of course, we have to make sure that we strengthen cyber security
because we're collecting a lot of data.
And I believe that while cities are a great challenge to us,
if we can find the right smart solutions,
we can make Singapore a much better home.
Thank you.
(Applause)