International Case Studies of Smart Cities: Singapore, Republic of Singapore
Date
Jun 2016
This case study is one of ten international studies developed by the Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements (KRIHS), in association with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), for the cities of Anyang, Medellin, Namyangju, Orlando, Pangyo, Rio de Janeiro, Santander, Singapore, Songdo, and Tel Aviv. At the IDB, the Competitiveness and Innovation Division (CTI), the Fiscal and Municipal Management Division (FMM), and the Emerging and Sustainable Cities Initiative (ESCI) coordinated the study. This project was part of technical cooperation ME-T1254, financed by the Knowledge Partnership Korean Fund for Technology and Innovation of the Republic of Korea. At KRIHS, the National Infrastructure Research Division coordinated the project and the Global Development Partnership Center provided the funding. The smart city initiative of Singapore originated from Smart Nation Vision established in 2014 which seeks to harness ICT, networks and data as a response to growing urban challenges of the aging population, urban density and energy sustainability. With its legendary infrastructure, technical advancement and the quality of human resources, Singapore's smart services are expected to be highly advanced. So far, the most developed smart services in Singapore is the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) with history of more than 10 years, as well as e-government which has been incubated since the early 80s. Smart Nation Vision includes a broad spectrum including smart transport, security, energy, building, education, health, and many more, and some services have been launched as trials while others are on their planning stage. Singapore provides an interesting unique case of an entire nation being developed with utilization of highly advanced smart systems and a new form of data sharing platform among various agencies that operate in a discrete manner.