Update on Singapore’s journey towards a smart nation

Just over two years ago Singapore announced its proposals for a program which was entitled Smart Nation.

The ambitious project was designed in order to fasten the city, residents and government into a new digital age of innovation and industry. Singapore is making the bold transition from a successful city to Smart Nation. It already has a fiber network infrastructure that stretches the length and breadth of the island.

The city state has also been at the forefront of autonomous vehicle testing.  A number of streets have been opened specifically to allow testing of self-driving cars and buses. There have been a number of small-scale trials on shuttles which have been carried out at Nanyang Technological University over the last couple of years.

More recently, MIT spin-off nuTonomy started testing autonomous taxis on the city’s streets, but while these innovative and exciting efforts continue – they are now making efforts beyond self-driving vehicles and have significantly reduced the issue of crowdedness on buses and waiting times on these services by introducing sensors.

Sensors are at the heart of Smart Nation and for among other things the government used them in order to track its bus convoy – their ability to crunch data has resulted in them being able to identify problems and formulate solutions to work around issues. This has resulted in a staggering 90% reduction on the issue of overcrowding and has reduced waiting times on services to between three to five minutes. All of this also has a very positive effect on energy efficiency and pollution control. Singapore Smart Nation