Singapore launches lab to co-create smart cities

• The Smart Urban Co-Innovation Lab will connect smart city developers in Singapore and beyond, in the first such venture in Southeast Asia

The first Southeast Asian smart cities development lab has been opened in Singapore, aiming to drive collaborative development of smart city solutions with other regional leaders in the space.

Diversified real estate developer CapitaLand, in cooperation with the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and Enterprise Singapore, headed up the establishment of the Smart Urban Co-Innovation Lab.

Situated at CapitaLand’s 55-hectare, 5G-equipped Singapore Science Park, the lab will bring together smart city solution developers from across the spectrum to work together and to test innovations in a live, localized environment.

These collaborative research and development projects will center around developing smart city solutions within six core industry verticals, namely advanced manufacturing, digital wellness, intelligent estates, smart mobility, sustainability, and urban agriculture.

The Smart Urban Co-Innovation Lab has already partnered with a variety of industry players with interest to co-innovate, test ideas feasibility in the lab, or to pilot trials together. These include Amazon Web Services, Cisco Systems, Johnson Controls, Microsoft, MooVita, NavInfo DataTech, Schneider Electric, SPTel, Vizzio.AI, and TPG Telecom.

These vendors and service providers will eventually collaborate with up to 200 companies in Singapore, working on smart city solutions over the next three years. The unique cooperative model that is being fostered at the lab will allow both domestic and overseas firms to exchange ideas together, help troubleshoot developmental challenges, identify opportunities for new business models, as well as facilitate the practical deployment of smart cities solutions.

CapitaLand has been working on multiple real estate and data infrastructure projects that will leverage future 5G connectivity, including residential projects. But the Smart Urban Co-Innovation Lab will be the first exploring smart cities using 5G at the Singapore Science Park, and together with IMDA and Enterprise Singapore, CapitaLand has committed S$10 million (US$7.63 million) towards catalyzing deployment of smart city solutions – both in and out of Singapore.

“The Smart Urban Co-Innovation Lab reinforces Singapore’s strengths as a deep innovation ecosystem where tech, industry, and government work together to co-create and accelerate solutions for smart cities solutions,” noted Jane Lim, the assistant chief executive of IMDA.

Enterprise Singapore assistant chief executive officer, Eunice Koh, on the other hand, believes that working on solutions to accommodate better urban living has the potential to change people’s lives for the better.

“For instance, Smarten Spaces, a Singapore SME tech provider introduced by Enterprise Singapore, has been working with Kone on unique innovations that use contactless and other technologies to help building owners and managers provide a safe work environment for their tenants and employees,” commented Koh.

“We will continue to work with our SMEs to tap on such opportunities and find the right partners to scale their solutions.”

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