With most of us choosing to work from home at least part of the time, the need for physical offices is probably on its way to diminishing somewhat.
Many companies (especially those with high rents to pay or leases to operate) are looking to address this decline with perks like free meals, flexible hours, or other perks, but could the answer to a better workplace be better technology?
Smart buildings (and smart cities) are nothing new, but TechRadar Pro was invited to Singapore to see what the potential next step in making office buildings smarter than ever is.
Go smart
From the outside, JTC Summit may look like any other office block. Located in Punggol towards western Singapore, its gleaming glass windows and bright, airy lobby make it a welcoming 24-storey building bustling with workers going about their daily tasks. Yet beneath the surface, a network of some 60,000 sensors power a hive of activity that makes a building almost the equivalent of a living organism.
As an island nation, space is limited in Singapore, with the government decentralizing the Central Business District (CBD) to other areas such as the Punggol Digital District that JTC Summit fits into. The nearby Singapore Institute of Technology, with its 12,000 students, makes Punggol an attractive location for next generation technology, particularly when testing the potential city of tomorrow.
Making such a large area “smart” is no easy task, so Govtech, the development arm of the Singaporean government, is set to develop a new framework that can combine a range of technologies from smart energy to building management and even robot delivery services into a single platform.
This is the open digital platform, serving as middleware to bring together a wide range of sectors along with infrastructure pillars from network to compute and storage, sharing data across multiple systems to deliver everything a smart office building might need via Smart District OS.
At the JTC Summit, building owners work alongside the building’s entire digital twin, meticulously recreated in the virtual world, to allow them to make decisions ranging from boosting efficiency to simply keeping the appropriate lights on.
The Smart District OS can monitor nearly every connected part of a building, giving details about items such as entrance gates, elevators and escalators to determine if there are any faults, malfunctions or outages that require attention.
The movement of these items can be viewed in real time, meaning managers can determine if an elevator is stuck between floors, while also allowing for remote control, so that entry gates can be opened to allow access to delivery people, or escalators can be closed at night time. to conserve energy.
The scope of the Smart District OS also extends to the rooms of the building, all of which are similarly equipped with smart sensors allowing for maximum personalization. If CCTV channels detect that the meeting room is too crowded, or outside weather data shows an increase in temperature, the air conditioner can be turned on to ensure that the attendees do not overheat, and the use of the rooms can be tracked over time to see if some meetings are worth moving to smaller venues or until completely cancelled.
In car parks, electric chargers have been installed to meet the growing demand for these vehicles, however they may pose certain fire hazards. Again, though, the CCTV camera feeds can detect any puffs of smoke, cut off the charger’s power and sound the alarm before a fire has a chance.
The JTC summit is also packed with a number of cool bots, capable of carrying out a variety of tasks, from delivering packages, spotting a maintenance alert, or simply patrolling the halls to spot any potential problems. These bots can be tracked in real time to make sure they don’t get lost or suspended, and they can be redirected or stopped if a different task or emergency situation arises.
On our visit to the JTC summit, James Tan, Director of Sensors and IoT, GovTech, points out that the ultimate plan is to roll out Smart District OS across the entire Punggol Digital District, which is about 50 hectares in size, giving government, business and citizen alike a way to Smarter to live.
Although still very much in beta, Govtech aims to roll out ODP and Smart District OS across Punggol around 2025, and the authority clearly has high hopes for the platform.
Besides saving costs due to lower maintenance and manpower costs, Tan points out that it can also help boost productivity and save resources, while encouraging businesses and government alike to work smarter. The launch of Punggol alone hopes to create around 28,000 jobs, and in a dynamic city like Singapore, this could only be the beginning.
under control
During our visit, Tan showed off a handful of demos showing the mind-boggling array of layers of information the system is equipped with, from live bus arrival times, to the number of empty car parks on certain streets, to tracking taxis. Across the island – whichever is free, for easy calling.
Using data shared by other government agencies, the system can also track flights coming in to land at the island’s Changi Airport, and has data on hundreds of ships waiting to enter Singapore’s massive ports, information that could be needed for police and security forces.
On an environmental level, we showed a demonstration of how Smart District OS tracks water levels in city drains and overflow channels in near real time, which could help monitor floods during the rainy season, or even detect suspicious discharges from nearby factories.
They could all be very useful in the real world, but Tan adds that one additional benefit of having a digital twin is that Govtech can run all kinds of simulations to prepare for any eventuality, from plotting traffic patterns to working out where trees can with it. To be planted to help build a shaded bus stop on a new street.
All in all, it looks like JTC Summit and Punggol Digital District might just be the beginning, and that if your Govtech dreams come true, your next office building might actually be a smart and interesting place to work.
“Nobody’s doing[what we’re doing]on such a large scale yet,” says Tan, “and we want our property to become a leading light.”
