Speech by Greg Seow, Chairman, SLA
Fri 24 Apr 2009 at SLA Spatial Challenge
Singapore Management University, Admin Auditorium
1. Good afternoon, and welcome to SLA’s Spatial Challenge for 2009. I remember SLA’s Spatial Challenge a year ago, viewing innovative projects done by talented students like you. One year on, the use of GIS in schools is growing. GIS, short for geographic information system, is simply a way to manage and analyse various spatial data on a map.
2. JCs using GIS are leading and changing the way geography is being taught in schools, and students are enjoying the practical outcomes. Innovative teachers are also realising the usefulness and potential applications of GIS.
3. This is the second year SLA has organised Spatial Challenge. Like last year, participation by schools continues to be strong. A total of 17 teams are taking part this year. It’s good to hear feedback from students that Spatial Challenge is fun and they’re discovering many practical applications of GIS. Spatial Challenge also gives teachers the opportunity to bring the classroom into the field, using GIS to map and find solutions to real world issues and to make learning more enjoyable.
4. Many of your projects touch on practical issues and have the potential to be developed into innovative GIS solutions. I encourage all teams to go beyond this Spatial Challenge competition by working with the local community around your school, with relevant public sector agencies, and with potential private sector partners to find effective GIS solutions. Who knows, perhaps a few potential multi-millionaires are already sitting in this auditorium thinking about how to use GIS to make a real difference in people’s lives in future.
5. GIS will be a key growth industry of the future. Despite present economic challenges, the use of spatial information will continue to grow rapidly as an enabling technology, and could exhibit what Moore’s Law said about technical change – that it will be exponential and will be able to keep doing more and at lower costs.
6. Aside from the present economic slowdown, climate change, conservation, urbanisation, and rapidly ageing populations are pressing long term challenges which will require the harnessing of spatial information. More work will be needed to collect, manage and assess spatial information in 2-dimensional and even 3-dimensional forms, and to overlay time over such data.
7. But harnessing GIS is not only for solving big problems, especially when spatial information creation is no longer the domain of GIS experts. Thanks to Google Map for example, users who have no technical knowledge of GIS are easily creating online maps to share with the community.
8. The rapid growth of community-created spatial information, for food recommendations, walking trails, and transport tips are just a few examples of the exciting opportunity ahead for the GIS industry and budding entrepreneurs. SLA will work together with the private sector in exploring new business models of cooperation and partnership, to facilitate the adoption and use of GIS information by the community.
9. Each of you will have a mobile device in your pocket or bag. Don’t be surprised, in the near future, that it will help you find the best way home depending on your transport choice, or select the best places to have dinner around SMU based on your preferences, and then tell you what’s showing at the various nearby museums or cinemas.
10. One of the key challenges to getting wider use of GIS information is to be able to collect and analyse spatial data on a consistent basis. SLA is taking the lead to establish a national spatial data infrastructure in Singapore. We’ve namede this initiative as the Singapore Geospatial Collaborative Environment, or SG-SPACE for short.
11. As the name suggests, SLA will be creating an environment in which the public and private sectors, and the community, can collaborate in making available, and using geospatial information for a wide range of shared applications.
12. Starting with the public sector, one of SLA’s key objectives for SG-SPACE is to allow spatial information from various sources to be shared more easily within the public sector. To do this, we are building the core GIS infrastructure that will facilitate greater sharing of spatial data. By next year, Singapore will have a clearinghouse that links up various public agencies that supply key data.
13. SLA’s plan for our SG-SPACE initiative is to include the private sector and the community. To facilitate this, we’re building an interactive map system which will be rolled out early next year. Besides presenting public sector information, this intelligent map system will allow businesses and users to integrate some of the public spatial information via convenient technical interfaces.
14. SLA will seek to develop partnerships with the private sector in promoting the use of GIS, and harnessing spatial information to create new products and services.
15. I would like to thank our main sponsor ESRI Singapore and our partner, the Ministry of Education. We appreciate the support from all of you, especially school principals and teachers. This Spatial Challenge initiative is only possible because of your keen interest and your school’s participation.
16. To student contestants, you’ve done well, and I congratulate you. Whether you win a prize this afternoon, you are already a winner, by being part of a pioneering GIS initiative which will help spur the SG-SPACE movement in Singapore in the years ahead. Thank you.
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