BT : Coping with rising urban population

Business Times - 03 Mar 2010

Coping with rising urban population

By adopting new intelligent systems, cities around the world can grow and flourish as their populations increase

By FOONG SEW BUN

THERE was a time when if someone asked about Singapore's population, the answer would be '3.5 million'. Today, the same question elicits a resounding 'about five million'. According to the Singapore Department of Statistics, Singapore's total population as at June 2009 was 4.997 million.

About 3.733 million are Singapore residents, comprising Singapore citizens and Permanent Residents. Compare this to five decades ago - Singapore's population totalled 1.646 million in 1960. How the city-state has grown. Now let's take a look beyond our shores.

An estimated 60 million people are moving to cities and urban areas each year - over one million every week. Today, the world's cities are simultaneously addressing increasing populations and deteriorating infrastructure. To sustain growth, cities around the world - including Singapore - need to look at new ways of doing things. In the next five years, by adopting systems that are intelligent, instrumented and interconnected, cities will change in the following ways:

Cities will have healthier immune systems: Given their population density, cities will remain hotbeds of communicable diseases. But in the future, public health officials will know precisely when, where and how diseases are spreading - even which neighbourhoods will be affected next.

Scientists will give city officials, hospitals, schools and workplaces the tools to better detect, track, prepare for and prevent infections, such as the H1N1 virus or seasonal influenza. We will see a 'health Internet' emerge, where anonymous medical information, contained in electronic health records, will be securely shared to curtail the spread of disease and keep people healthier.

IBM is already working with organisations worldwide, such as the Nuclear Threat Initiative's Global Health and Security Initiative and the Middle East Consortium on Infectious Disease Surveillance, to standardise methods for sharing health information and analysing infectious disease outbreaks.

City buildings will sense and respond like living organisms: As people move into city buildings at record rates, buildings will be built smartly. Today, many of the systems that constitute a building - heat, water, sewage, electricity, etc - are managed independently.

In the future, the technology that manages facilities will operate like a living organism that can sense and respond quickly, in order to protect citizens, save resources and reduce carbon emissions. Thousands of sensors inside buildings will monitor everything from motion and temperature to humidity, occupancy and light. The building won't just coexist with nature - it will harness it. This system will enable repairs before something breaks, emergency units to respond quickly with the necessary resources, and consumers and business owners to monitor their energy consumption and carbon emission in real time and take action to reduce them.

Some buildings are already showing signs of intelligence by reducing energy use, improving operational efficiency, and improving comfort and safety for occupants. For the first time, the 'E' on gas gauges will mean 'enough'. Increasingly, cars and city buses no longer will rely on fossil fuels. Vehicles will begin to run on new battery technology that won't need to be recharged for days or months at a time, depending on how often you drive.

Scientists and engineers are working to design new batteries that will make it possible for electric vehicles to travel 500km to 800km on a single charge, up from 80km to 160km currently. Also, smart grids in cities could enable cars to be charged in public places and use renewable energy, such as wind power, for charging so they no longer rely on coal-powered plants. This will lower emissions as well as minimise noise pollution.

Smarter systems will quench cities' thirst for water and save energy: Today, one in five people lacks access to safe drinking water, and municipalities lose an alarming amount of precious water - up to 50 per cent through leaky infrastructure. On top of that, human demand for water is expected to increase sixfold in the next 50 years. To deal with this challenge, cities will install smarter water systems to reduce water waste by up to 50 per cent. Cities will also install smart sewer systems that not only prevent run-off pollution in rivers and lakes but also purify water to make it drinkable.

Advanced water purification technologies will help cities recycle and reuse water locally, reducing energy used to transport water by up to 20 per cent. Interactive meters and sensors will be integrated into water and energy systems, providing you with real time, accurate information about your water consumption so you will be able to make better decisions about how and when you use this valuable resource.

Cities will respond to a crisis - even before receiving an emergency phone call: Cities will be able to reduce and even prevent emergencies, such as crime and disasters. More than 70 per cent of the world's population will live in cities by 2050. By taking these steps over the next five years, cities around the world can grow and flourish as their populations increase.

One wonders what Singapore's population figure will be by then.

The writer is a distinguished engineer and chief technologist with IBM Singapore

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