LTA, SMRT, StarHub and IBM collaborate to improve transport with Data for Singapore commuters

Tracking commuter movement for faster emergency response
By David Ee, The Straits Times, 3 Jun 2014

A PLAN dreamt up by computer geeks could make your train or bus ride a lot smoother.

By crunching huge amounts of data to make sense of commuters' movements and travel patterns, agencies here believe that they will be able to respond better to breakdowns, emergencies or other unplanned events.

This is the aim of a research collaboration that technology firm IBM signed yesterday with the Land Transport Authority (LTA), transport operator SMRT and telecommunications company StarHub, to help improve the management of incidents on the public transport network.

Called Fusion AnalyticS for public Transport Emergency Response, or Faster, the two-year tie-up will see data from SMRT and StarHub combined and studied using IBM data analytics.

SMRT will provide video feeds from selected train stations, while StarHub will share anonymised location-based data of its mobile subscribers.

Should there be a surge in people at train stations, for instance, IBM's system could predict what commuters would do next, and assess how best for agencies to react. And people could also be evacuated faster in an emergency if their movement patterns were known.

The announcement of the project comes amid lingering dissatisfaction over public transport here due to overcrowding and breakdowns.

President and chief executive officer of SMRT Desmond Kuek, speaking at the signing ceremony at the World Cities Summit at Marina Bay Sands, called the tie-up "a potential game-changer" in preparing the company for any eventuality on its train and bus networks.

"All of this, we hope, will allow us to better predict and to assess how commuters might react, and move, upstream and downstream of any particular transport incident," he said.

StarHub CEO Tan Tong Hai, commenting on the telco's involvement, said that issues like these require partners. "There's no way a single agency has all the information," he said.

He stressed that StarHub would abide by the law and "respect the privacy of every individual" as it shares data with IBM.

IBM Singapore managing director Janet Ang said yesterday that its smart technologies are aimed at improving lives.

"It's not data for data's sake," she said.

LTA CEO Chew Hock Yong added that exploring data analytics would "help us do our jobs better, so that we can serve commuters even better".

The LTA has also been working with IBM to explore the feasibility of a satellite-based electronic road pricing system. This would use an on-board monitor to charge vehicles according to distance travelled.