Powered by sophisticated analysis of images and data collected from public agencies and real-time sensors, Virtual Singapore is designed to give a whole new meaning to the term “smart city.” By giving the city-state’s citizens, businesses, government agencies and research community dynamic 3D visualizations of wildly diverse scenarios, it can be used to plan everything from emergency evacuations to a perfect night on the town. The project, called Virtual Singapore, is led by the National Research Foundation Singapore together with the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) and Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), and is expected to be progressively developed, with completion in 2018.

Although many cities are working to assemble and analyze their data in hopes of improving city life, Virtual Singapore is unusual because it will allow all users to visualize in 3D how the city will develop and evolve with time in response to population growth, new construction and other major events. The Virtual Singapore concept combines several hot technological trends, including big data, the Internet of Things, 3D modeling and predictive analytics. The model will provide information to four basic constituencies. The Virtual Singapore project will support Singapore’s vision for creating a “smart nation,” but its vision of giving access to citizens and visitors makes it fundamentally different from what other cities, such as Rio de Janeiro, are doing to make their operations “smarter.”

As it prepares for the 2016 Summer Olympics, Rio has created a command-and-control center where information about electricity usage, water and waste management, traffic flow and crime can be collected in real time. But only government agencies will have access to the data. How will Virtual Singapore help the city, recognized as one of the world’s most livable, maintain that status in the face of rapid growth projections? As an example, Loh cites the planning required for Singapore to host the Formula One automobile races held there every September, when the government shuts down roads at night and the race cars speed through the city. Huge crowds come to watch the races, but city planners have to prepare for the dangers of evacuating spectators in case of a fiery crash.

Virtual Singapore will help by giving city planners the ability to overlay or “stream in” the locations of people based on signals from their smartphones. “You will know where all the entrances and exits are, and you know how the crowd will be moving based on the historical data of previous years,” Loh explained. “If something really bad happens, through 3D predictive and intelligent agents modeling you can see how people would disperse and how they would behave. You create a plan for how you would evacuate people.” Virtual Singapore will also develop a common data exchange platform, making much of the data that already exists in government ministries easier to access and share in a secured and controlled environment.

Visualization is a major goal of the project so that the aggregated and integrated data from different sources can be “seen.” Virtual Singapore also gives its leaders an opportunity to inspire the city’s young people to take up science and technology subjects through projects such as the National Science Experiment (NSE). The NSE has a dual goal of exposing students to real-world applications of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) while collecting environmental data that can be used to populate Virtual Singapore. Organized by the National Research Foundation Singapore and the Ministry of Education, in partnership with the Singapore University of Technology and Design, the Science Centre Singapore and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research, the program began in 2015 with a pilot project involving more than 300 young Singaporeans.

By the time the NSE ends in 2017, more than 250,000 students are expected to take part. Each participant is equipped with a simple device called SENSg, which can capture data, including temperature, humidity and noise levels, wherever the devices go. The information is transmitted wirelessly to a central computer server. Students can go online and log in to see their own data, including their number of steps taken, time spent outdoors and travel patterns. They can also compare notes with friends while discovering the relationship between travel patterns and carbon footprints.

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