Fueling Singapore's Smart Nation drive with data

The days of science and technology being a niche subject are far over. Today, ask anyone why they use their smartphone model of choice and there's a good chance you'll get a lengthy exposition on the pros and cons of different operating systems, screen sizes, and the chips in the devices.

This democritisation of technology knowledge has been gathering steam over the years, and our connectedness to online services has only served to drive up the collection of personal data, and raise awareness of our digital footprints.

People understand that there is a data trove they're sitting on, but till very recently, being able to dive into that data was a domain exclusive to statisticians and number crunchers.

The commercial sector recognises the implications of understanding this data. Business workers, too, want in on the data smarts, and they're asking for the tools that will open the doors to it.

We're seeing large firms like HP, IBM, and Oracle come up with ways to bring complicated data to corporate users in a palatable, visual way—users with no prior technical training but who crave better insights from data that they have stored away.

Smaller firms are sitting up to the appetite for data analytics. Splunk is one of the dotcoms leading the charge to transform machine data into valuable insight, and smaller options like Sumo Logic and Loggly also promise to provide new value to the man on the street.

Data inherent to our lives

Outside of the corporate setting, data can hold the key to making cities and lives better, too.

Increased urbanisation is putting tremendous strain on land resources and the environment, making urban solutions such as smart sensing crucial in providing real-time information on the environment. A*STAR’s Sense and Sense-abilities programme has developed key systems that tap on smart sensors and their accumulated data to monitor urban challenges such as noise pollution, or maximise resources for a cleaner environment.

Over at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), senior research engineer Oliver Senn sifted through 830 million GPS records from 80 million taxi trips across 16,000 cars, and two months of weather data, to find out why it was impossible to get a taxi when it rained. After speaking with drivers about this curious finding, he realised that many drivers decided to wait out storms instead of risking an accident.

A seemingly simple urban traffic study like this can throw up big implications for city management—policies and issues hindering us from living better can be put under a spotlight and resolved. Incidentally, Senn works with MIT’s Senseable City Lab, which is exhibiting an installation called Data Drives at the Singapore Science Festival. Visitors will get to play with an interactive touch-table that will put the power of big data in their hands.

Some of this data includes public and private transport, mobile telephone usage, electricity consumption, weather data, and road conditions. Through beautiful visual presentations, the user will see how the data can be sliced, diced, and mashed together, allowing them to reveal the hidden dynamics of the city they live in.

Future of computing

Visitors to the Singapore Science Festival can expect to experience and engage with the convergence of science and data. Users will get to see how high performance computing systems and large scale simulations are used to push the boundaries of science and technology.

Singapore is in good stead to become the world’s first Smart Nation. As Singapore’s lead agency for research and development, A*STAR has spearheaded data analytics research since 2005, going on to establish initiatives that bring together government agencies and industry players.

The Urban Systems Initiative aims to create a City Dashboard that will allow the public sector, businesses, and people to make informed decisions based on insights from real-time sensing, super algorithms, and complex simulations that respond to dynamic conditions in the city.