ST Engineering announced its collaboration with the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) to develop and commercialise an Urban Planning Solution that supports global digitalisation efforts in city planning and management. Designed with an open-source technology stack, the solution will benefit city planners of all scales as it can be customised to different cities’ needs and reduce the cost outlay.

The solution builds upon URA’s existing suite of city planning solutions that have been used for Singapore’s development, contributing to its success as the one of the most liveable cities in Asia. URA’s urban planning tools have been refined over the years gleaning lessons learnt from real-world deployment. ST Engineering will leverage its capabilities in modelling, visualisation and sense-making to further enhance these tools and extend the solution for global deployment.

“Urban planning is becoming more complex in today’s world, with cities facing population and resource challenges. By combining our deep technology expertise with URA’s proven urban planning methodologies, we now have an enhanced solution that enriches the traditional ways of information gathering, providing quantitative and qualitative insights to help city planners strengthen strategy planning and expedite cities’ development,” said Mr Tan Yuh Cherng, General Manager of ST Engineering’s Training & Simulation Systems.

“URA’s digital planning tools have become a cornerstone of city planning in Singapore over the years, allowing planners across government agencies to share data and insights. By assembling a more holistic picture of different urban systems and planning options, we have been able to strengthen the way we plan for land use, infrastructure and amenities. The Urban Redevelopment Authority sees this collaboration with ST Engineering as an excellent opportunity to bring our digital planning solutions to cities around the world so they can also use these tools to harness data and technology in a practical and meaningful way to create liveable cities for people,” added Mr Goh Siow Chong, Chief Information Officer of URA.

The Urban Planning Solution includes:

• ePlanner, a geospatial planning data analytics portal targeted at city planners for policy and operational decision making;
• Urban Systems Dashboard, a collaborative and advanced dashboard that enables different agencies and stakeholders to plan or monitor existing and upcoming public infrastructure projects in a systematic manner; and
• GEMMA, a multi-dimensional and time-scale scenario planning and analysis tool that supports the development of strategic plans.

The enhanced solution will enable city planners to easily visualise, analyse and overlay individual cities’ rich sets of information. In addition to facilitating coordination among stakeholders for more integrated planning, the system also helps to address cities’ needs in areas of macro land use policy, physical planning, infrastructure monitoring, and development control. City planners will have a more holistic understanding of the ground situation and be better positioned to anticipate changes that lie ahead.

The Urban Planning Solution will be showcased at the Singapore World Cities Summit from 5 to 9 July 2020 at Sands Expo & Convention Centre, Marina Bay Sands, Booth L5-01.

ST Engineering is a global technology, defence and engineering group specialising in the aerospace, electronics, land systems and marine sectors. The Group employs about 23,000 people across offices in Asia, U.S., Europe and the Middle East, serving customers in the defence, government and commercial segments in more than 100 countries. With more than 700 smart city projects across 130 cities in its track record, the Group continues to help transform cities through its suite of Smart Mobility, Smart Security and Smart Environment solutions. Headquartered in Singapore, ST Engineering reported revenue of $7.9b in FY2019 and it ranks among the largest companies listed on the Singapore Exchange. It is a component stock of the FTSE Straits Times Index, MSCI Singapore, SGX ESG Transparency Index and SGX ESG Leaders Index.