Smart Gardens – Deploying Digital Technologies for Better Park Management

Overview

Smart Gardens at Gardens by the Bay was launched in November 2020. It is an integrated system of lampposts, sensors, and robots developed as part of the Smart Nation initiative to ensure that Singapore remains an outstanding global city. The Smart Nation initiative aims to create new opportunities in a digital age, and transform the way people live, work and play. The goal of the Smart Gardens is to utilise networked sensors to collect abiotic and biotic information that can be used to improve park operations, ensure visitor safety and improve the overall park experience.

What are Smart Gardens?

Smart Gardens aims to streamline processes, enable smart deployment of manpower through data insights, and improve service quality by leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

To achieve these goals, Smart Gardens will deploy digital technologies in the areas of plant monitoring and irrigation, lake management, integrated security, lighting, and facilities management. In the aspect of irrigation, sensors will provide analytics on soil moisture and lake health and optimise plant maintenance by integrating with the existing irrigation system. Next, in the areas of lighting, smart lampposts will be implemented to address preventative maintenance and energy savings. Next, autonomous drones will also be employed to inspect the irrigation pipes of the 18 Supertrees. The drone is expected to cut the current three-person job down to a single person. The drones can also be applied to other inaccessible areas such as the 3,800 sqm plant-clad mountain in the Cloud Forest. Finally, other technologies include automated people counting sensors at the entrances for crowd management, smart waste bins to reduce the size of the cleaning crew and a centralised command and control centre to aid in security.

Why Should Smart Gardens be Adopted?

While Smart Gardens will eventually enhance the experience for visitors, it is developed primarily to assist employees at Gardens by the Bay with the operations. There is also an expected cost savings of $2.3 million a year when the first phase of the Smart Garden vision is implemented in 2022. In terms of productivity, the company will save about 14,700 man-days. Finally, it reduces its reliance on foreign labour through automation, enables smarter deployment of a skilled local workforce using data, and improves service quality through AI and ML.

What’s Next?

Currently, the Sensors and IoT (SIOT) team at GovTech is working on an operation mobile app to onboard devices such as light controllers, gateways, and sensors to Device management, Control And Data Acquisition system (DECADA) cloud for employee usage. The team is also looking to develop a commercial app to enhance visitors’ experience.

The SIOT team is also working to develop IoT systems for the Whole-Of-Government (WOG) and integrate the Gardens by the Bay IoT systems into a DECADA system. This is a multi-tenant IoT Cloud platform that provides support for device management, dashboard, controls and data acquisition capabilities.

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Last updated 11 August 2022

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