With most of us choosing to work from home at least part of the time, the need for physical offices may be waning somewhat.
Many companies (especially those that pay high rents or leases) want to remedy this decline with benefits such as free meals, flexible working hours or other benefits, but can better technology really be better technology?
Smart buildings (and smart cities) are nothing new, but TechRadar Pro was invited to Singapore to see the potential next step in making office buildings smarter than ever before.
Going smart
From the outside, JTC Summit may look like any other office building. Sparkling glass windows and a bright, spacious lobby make it a welcoming 31-story headquarters where employees go about their daily tasks. However, below the surface, a network of some 60,000 sensors fuels a swarm of activity that makes the building almost the equivalent of a living thing.
As an island country, space is limited in Singapore and the government has decentralized its central business district (CBD) to other areas.
Making an area “smart” is no easy task, so Govtech, the development arm of the Singapore government, developed a new framework that would be able to combine a range of technologies, from smart energy to building management and even robotic delivery services, into a single platform.
It is an open digital platform that acts as middleware, bringing together a wide range of verticals along with infrastructure pillars from networking to computing and storage, sharing data across multiple systems to offer everything a smart office building could want through a Smart OS District.
At JTC Summit, building owners work with a complete digital twin of the building, meticulously recreated in a virtual world, to enable them to make decisions from increasing efficiency to maintaining the right lights.
Smart District OS can monitor almost any connected part of a building, providing detailed information on elements such as entrance gates, elevators and escalators to detect any outages, faults or outages that require attention.
The movement of these items can be viewed in real-time, meaning managers can detect if an elevator is stuck between floors, but they also allow for remote control, so you can unlock the entrance gates to allow delivery people access, or turn off the escalator at an hour in night to save energy.
The reach of the Smart District OS also extends to the rooms of the building, all of which are similarly equipped with smart sensors that allow for maximum customization. If the CCTV channels detect that the conference room is too crowded or the weather data outside indicates that the temperature is rising, the air conditioning can be turned on to ensure that the participants do not overheat, and the use of the rooms can be tracked over time to see if certain meetings are worth move to smaller premises or even cancel altogether.
EV chargers have been installed in car parks to meet the growing demand for EVs, however they may pose some fire risk. Again, however, CCTV feeds can detect any characteristic puffs of smoke, cut power to the charger, and raise the alarm before the fire has time to get under control.
JTC Summit is also filled with lots of cute robots that are capable of doing a variety of tasks, from delivering packages, detecting maintenance alerts, or simply patrolling the halls to spot potential problems. These robots can be tracked in real-time to ensure they don’t get lost or stuck, and they can be redirected or stopped if another task or emergency arises.
During our visit to the JTC Summit, James Tan, Director of Sensors and IoT at GovTech, notes that the ultimate plan is to deploy the Smart District OS throughout the Punggol Digital District, an area of approximately 50 hectares, giving government, business and citizens a much smarter way of life.
While still largely in the trial phase, Govtech aims to roll out ODP and Smart District OS in Punggol around 2025, and it’s clear the organization has high hopes for the platform.
Tan notes that in addition to the cost savings from lower maintenance and labor costs, it can also help increase productivity and conserve resources while encouraging both business and government to work smarter. Punggol’s implementation alone aims to create around 28,000 jobs, and in a city as dynamic as Singapore, this could only be the beginning.
controlled
During our visit, Tan presented a number of demonstrations showcasing the astounding array of information layers the system is equipped with, ranging from live bus arrival times, the number of empty parking spaces on certain streets, to tracking taxis all over the island – namely which are free, for easy recall.
Using data shared by other government agencies, the system can also track flights landing at the island’s Changi Airport and has data on hundreds of ships waiting to enter Singapore’s megaports, information that could be vital to police and security forces.
At the environmental level, we showed a demonstration of how Smart District OS can track water levels in city sewers and overflow channels in near real-time, which can help monitor flash floods during wound season and even detect suspicious discharges from nearby factories.
All of this can prove extremely useful in the real world, but Tan adds that the added benefit of having a digital twin is that Govtech can run all sorts of simulations to ultimately prepare for anything from plotting traffic patterns to figuring out where trees might be planted to help build a shaded bus stop on the new street.
Overall, it seems that JTC Summit and Punggol Digital District may be just the beginning, and if Govtech’s dreams come true, your next office building could be a more elegant and pleasant place to work.
“Nobody else is doing (what we do) on such a large scale yet,” says Tan, “and we want our property to be a guiding light.”