1 Singapore Land Authority (SLA), the national land and mapping authority, is welcoming undergraduate scholarship applicants to pursue geospatial science and technology related disciplines over three to four years, both locally and overseas. “Apart from recruiting mid-career officers with geospatial science and technology¹-related degrees and work experiences, attracting and developing talent via the scholarship channel will enable SLA to address the challenges of a fast-growing geospatial industry”, says SLA’s Chief Executive, Mr Lam Joon Khoi.

2 As testimony of SLA’s effort to groom future talents in geospatial science and technology, SLA held its 2nd Geographic Information System (GIS) competition namely, SLA Spatial Challenge 2009 at Singapore Management University (SMU) this afternoon. The SLA Spatial Challenge 2009 is an initiative aimed at increasing the awareness and encouraging the use of GIS technology in schools. Supported by the Ministry of Education, the Challenge is organised for Pre-University students. Graced by its Chairman, Mr Greg Seow, in his address, said, “Despite present economic challenges, the use of spatial information will continue to grow rapidly as an enabling technology -- it will be exponential and will be able to keep doing more and at lower costs.” He also praised the students for displaying sensitivity and understanding of current hot topics as the project titles presented geospatial solutions to managing climate change, bush fires, demographic challenges of the community, public transportation, etc. To add realism and relevance to real-life issues, government agencies such as MOE, LTA and AVA came up with different scenarios for the participants to work on. Some scenarios include studying the feasibility of setting up a training centre at a suitable location; analysing and determining a housing estate's bus transit availability and distribution; and determining the stray animal population and their distribution in Singapore.

3 Through Spatial Challenge, SLA hopes to encourage students to look at the community with a spatial perspective and propose location-based solutions, using the latest GIS technologies. In fact, the GIS has helped made Geography a more practical and hands-on subject in classroom teaching for Pioneer Junior College (PJC), whose team won the $5,000 top prize in the Challenge with their project on tackling bush fires with spatial layers using temperature, wind and climate change.

4 Said Mr Mohamed Osman, a Geography teacher from PJC, “I use GIS software to make Geography lessons more hands-on. It allows the students to manipulate and explore the data and make them see patterns and relationships. Some features of the GIS are very useful, especially, the inquiry function in which students can key in the name of a place and the screen pinpoint to the location. As the GIS software displays digital maps of the real world, through exploration and interaction, the students can relate the concepts learnt in class better using real world examples such as location of cities and their level of urbanisation and growth. These skills are not only important for learning of geography at ‘A’ levels but also transferable for future use. These skills are highly beneficial for students who would like to further specialise into this area.” In fact, Mr Osman himself had had a short teacher programme industry stint with SLA’s Land Information Centre (LIC) last year where he helped to design scenario-based hands-on exercises to promote the use of GIS in teacher and student training experiences and methodologies.

6 Tertiary institutions such as National University of Singapore, National Technological University, Singapore Management University, Singapore Polytechnic, also participated in SLA Spatial Challenge 2009 by showcasing their in-house GIS projects such as using the GIS model to study spatial distribution of locations that experienced earthquake tremor, applications of 3D GIS in urban planning, a GIS framework for the monitoring and conservation of walking trails at the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, an integrated Simulation Model within a GIS for Transport Management. A simple simulation of a road network with ERP gantries and motorists is set up to demonstrate the potential and applicability of the tool. Another project focuses on designing a road network data model incorporating real world traffic related features and various traffic restrictions such as junction delays, traffic conditions and turn restrictions in a GIS database.

¹ Geospatial science & technology field includes disciplines such as Geographic Information System (GIS) and Mnaagement, Geomatics, Surveying, Mapping and Cartography, Satellite Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry, etc.

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Issued by:
Singapore Land Authority
24 April 2009

About the Singapore Land Authority

Singapore Land Authority (SLA) is a statutory board with the Ministry of Law. Its mission is to optimise land resources for the economic and social development of Singapore. SLA is responsible for the direct management of some 14,000 hectares of State land and about 5,000 buildings. It is also in charge of land sales, leases, acquisitions and allocation, developing and marketing land-related information, and maintaining the national land information database through digitised land information services. SLA is also the national land registration authority for property transactions, and the issuance and guarantee of land titles in Singapore. It also manages and maintains the national land survey systems, including the defining of boundaries or legal limits of properties based on a coordinated cadastre survey systems. Please visit www.sla.gov.sg for more information.

Additional information on the use of geospatial data within the Government agencies:

Traditionally, “hard” data in the government domain dominate the use of GIS, for example, roads, drains, water pipes, gas pipes, buildings, legal boundaries, etc. For a long time, SLA has been using GIS to maintain sound land asset and survey records. It is very basic and elementary. We have also used GIS to maintain a centralized land data exchange system that is used by various government agencies. As a leading GIS agency in the Singapore public sector, the SLA has begun to leverage on GIS even more. Some examples of the use of GIS are the study of damage to coastlines by tsunami, monitoring of forest fires in Indonesia, routing of emergency services, demographic distribution, availability of social services and accessibility studies of public transportation, car navigation systems and online street directories. For example, the SLA is now using GIS and some statistical tools to model landslide incidents on the land that we manage. Combining geographic information relating to slope characteristics and weather, the model helps us to identify high risk locations for pre-emptive action.

Since SLA began building its GIS capabilities in the 1990s, it has created a huge repository of more than 200 layers of spatial information in its Land Data Hub (LDH), which are contributed by 15-agencies like JTC, URA, HDB. Some of these layers include the basic ones like roads, buildings, points of interest, reservoirs, parks, HDB flats, community centres etc. There are also more complex ones like land ownership layers, urban planning, utilities network and topographical maps. SLA shares these map layers with other agencies via its web portal called Land Information Network (LandNet) system. For example, the very basic base reference maps are being used everyday by agencies for their operational work, and agencies like National Environment Agency (NEA) uses address points to help in outbreak management, while URA and LTA use land ownership data to help them in town-planning, and road line planning, respectively.