SINGAPORE – Singapore robotics firm dConstruct will be among the first wave of tenants to move into Punggol Digital District (PDD) in 2025. For the company, which plans to test various robots – including a humanoid concierge robot and others that specialise in deliveries and surveillance – there is no other place to be. A major attraction for companies like dConstruct is the district’s open digital platform (ODP), Singapore’s first estate-wide computer operating system that allows robots, surveillance cameras and all kinds of sensors to plug in and be controlled centrally, without needing to fuss over the underlying control infrastructure. For instance, companies do not need to configure their systems for different areas, like how a mobile app might work exclusively on iOS but not on Android. Mr Chinn Lim, dConstruct’s chief executive, said the ODP enables robots to navigate lifts and turnstiles throughout the district’s eight blocks that occupy an area equivalent to 70 football fields. These robots can deliver items, clean the premises or look out for safety. “It was difficult to say no (to relocating to PDD),” said Mr Lim. “There’s nowhere else in Singapore that has this kind of technology at a district scale.” His company is slated to collect its keys in February and move out of its office in one-north by September.   The ODP is central to the smart district’s plans to draw the likes of dConstruct to populate the enterprise park – Singapore’s take on the US’ Silicon Valley. More than two-thirds of the PDD’s office spaces have been taken up, attracting banks, cyber-security organisations and other tech firms. Local systems integration company Delteq and the Association of Information Security Professionals will relocate there by the middle of 2025. GovTech, too, plans to move in starting late 2025. Software coders, engineers and cyber sleuths from OCBC Bank, UOB and Singapore’s Cyber Security Agency will join them by 2027. Several food joints, such as Astons, Sushi-Go and Playmade, are expected to open in March, while nearly half of the Singapore Institute of Technology’s students have relocated to the Punggol campus. The remaining 8,200 students currently at the school’s various campuses will move over by mid-2025. The main atrium of the Punggol Digital District.ST PHOTO: MARK CHEONG The novel 50ha business park in the north-east of the island, earmarked to spur innovation, progressively opened in late 2024 and is scheduled for completion by 2026. It is billed as Singapore’s first Smart Nation business district. In October 2024, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong referred to it as the nation’s first smart district, where companies, research institutes and government agencies spearhead technological innovation. He made these remarks at the launch of Singapore’s Smart Nation 2.0, the first major event held at the PDD. The PDD is another enterprise hub in Singapore, following the launch of one-north in 2001 as a science park focusing on scientific and technological research and development. One-north similarly adapted Silicon Valley’s approach in clustering start-ups and big players to drive innovation. Mr James Tan, director of JTC Corporation’s smart district division, describes the ODP as a smart city operating system akin to a mobile operating system. It can seamlessly analyse the energy use of tenants, footfall in the district and the deployment of robots.  The platform was trialled on a smaller scale at the JTC Summit office building in Jurong East. At the PDD, it will be taken to another level, due to the sheer volume of interconnected offices, utilities and public facilities, including a train station. Punggol Coast MRT station opened its doors in December, connecting the district to Outram Park through the city centre via the North East Line.  Mr James Tan, director of JTC Corporation’s smart district division and GovTech’s smart city technology division, operating the Open Digital Platform.PHOTO: JTC Some 20,000 sensors scattered across the district will track metrics such as movement, temperatures and energy consumption. The sensors track all moving parts of the district, including the centralised waste management system that transports trash from buildings via a 4km underground conveyance system.  All activities are monitored on dashboards at a single command post, where the smart district’s digital twin – a 3D computer replica of the PDD to keep tabs on conditions in the park – is also displayed.  The platform reduces the guesswork needed to manage a multitude of systems that underpin smart districts and guzzle high amounts of energy for equipment like air-conditioning, artificial intelligence (AI) systems and numerous sensors.  For instance, the ODP analyses the distribution of people within a building through surveillance cameras and security gantries where workers tap to enter.  With this real-time data, it can recommend a schedule for the lifts, such as “parking” lifts on floors with high foot traffic, thus reducing electrical consumption and enhancing convenience for the users.  The same logic applies to the district’s smart cooling system that serves offices, malls, hotels and the train station within the estate.  Chillers (centre) and pipes supplying and returning water pictured at the district cooling system.ST PHOTO: MARK CHEONG The ODP’s AI controls the temperature settings of the air-conditioners in each location by taking into consideration the footfall, historical data and live weather information.  The concept builds on the centralised cooling system at the “eco-smart” Tengah housing estate that sends chilled air to rooms within a housing block. This is said to offer up to 30 per cent in savings on power bills for residents in the long run.  Mr Tan of JTC hopes the smart district will be a model for future smart business and residential areas in Singapore, and that the proximity to other tech players and services such as the ODP will attract more companies. Correction note: An earlier version of the story named Boston Dynamics as an upcoming tenant at the district. JTC has clarified that that is no longer accurate.

in other news: stall rentals do not directly affect food prices  

Over 3,000 F&B establishments in Singapore closed in 2024, the highest in almost two decades since 2005. A CNA report shed light on the closures, which are mostly attributed to dwindling business amidst higher operating costs.       “We’re at the landlord’s mercy” One impending closure is wine bar Wine RVLT, which will shutter after its current lease ends later this year. It had been operating at Carpenter Street for almost eight years, and faced challenges in juggling higher overheads despite seeing fewer customers. In an Instagram post, the bar’s owners announced that their business was “no longer sustainable and we’ve decided to call it quits”. 1of3 Photo: Wine Rvlt The post elaborated that “during Covid so many else [sic] increased like nobody’s business. Chicken, veg, water, electricity, rent (douchebags) etc etc but post-Covid your landlords will NEVER tell you that rent should come down and still pushed for a 30 to 35% increment. BUT people stopped coming back and business didn’t increase 30 to 35%”. In an interview with CNA, Wine RVLT’s director and co-founder Ian Lim revealed: “We’re at the landlord’s mercy. We don’t have much negotiating power because we’re a single location operator. Everything is slowly, slowly creeping up, and we have not changed our prices over the past few years. Being squeezed from both ends is not fun.” Wine RVLT’s Instagram post also posed the question: “Well a good time for reflection. Did food get bad and not creative and not trying? Did service become indifferent and cold and pretentious? As an operator I think we [are] still trying to improve but oh well.” 2of3 Photo: Elfuego by Collin's Singaporeans spending more overseas, weaker local tourism demand According to CNA, analysts attribute slow business in Singapore’s F&B industry to the strong Sing dollar, which is pushing Singaporeans to spend more overseas instead. This is reportedly coupled with weaker tourism demand from China. Two local F&B brands at Jewel Changi Airport will close their outlets by this month: Peranakan food doyenne Violet Oon’s eponymous restaurant on Feb 3, and halal Western restaurant Elfuego on Feb 28. The latter is opened by local Western chain Collin’s. 3of3 Photo: Violet Oon Singapore But new F&B openings still outpace the closures, CNA reported, with 3,793 openings last year. Violet Oon is also setting up a new restaurant at the scenic Dempsey Hill, which will include “indoor and outdoor dining spaces set amongst lush greenery”.

SINGAPORE – While serving the first few years of his sentence for gang-related offences in Changi Prison as a teenager in the early 2000s, Mr Andyn Kadir felt resigned to a life of crime and violence. But after he was transferred to the former prison school at Kaki Bukit Centre, Mr Andyn, now 40, continued his studies, took religious classes and eventually passed his N-level examinations while serving his sentence. About a year after his release in December 2005, he landed a full-time job in the fitness industry. Today, the fitness professional gives talks to inmates and takes former offenders on trekking expeditions to raise funds for Mawar Community Services (MCS), a non-profit that he has been volunteering with since 2016. Mr Andyn and other former offenders will now get to share their experiences of life behind bars as well as life after prison with even more people, with the opening on Feb 1 of MCS’ new home in Geylang Serai. They will conduct tours and deliver talks to school and corporate groups at the new MCS Hub at 69A Onan Road, which features a mock four-man prison cell to give visitors an insight into prison life, and a preventive drug education exhibition. Ustaz Mohamed Basir Mohamed Shariff, programme director of MCS, said the organisation hopes to show the community, especially young people, how difficult prison life is through the replica of the bare prison cell.     “We want to tell the young people what drugs and being in a gang can do to you, physically, biologically (and) emotionally, and how it will destroy relationships. We hope to put across the message (that they should) not waste (their lives) in the cell,” said Ustaz Mohamed Basir, a former offender who was in and out of prison for 30 years. MCS, formerly known as the Muslim Counselling Service, was renamed in 2024 to expand its services – including counselling, motivational talks, and trekking and humanitarian expeditions – to former offenders of all races and religions. The registered society, which was established in 1978 and supports over 100 former offenders yearly to reduce the rate of reoffending, was previously based in an office unit in Changi Road. At the launch of the MCS Hub on Feb 1, Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam said that organisations in the community like MCS have played a big part in rehabilitating inmates and former offenders. “Prisons provide the framework, (and) organisations like MCS come in and provide the secret sauce,” he said. The results of this partnership between the Singapore Prison Service and community organisations have been good, said Mr Shanmugam, who added that the recidivism rate had come down from around 36 per cent to 37 per cent for the 2011 release cohort to about 20 per cent for the 2021 cohort. Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam viewing the mock prison cell at the MCS Hub on Feb 1.ST PHOTO: KEVIN LIM The MCS Hub will allow the organisation to increase the frequency of its programmes and offer new ones, said MCS chairman Shaukath Ali at the hub’s launch. For example, a new computer classroom will enable MCS to hold robotics and programming classes for the children of former offenders in collaboration with ground-up initiative Byte.sg. The hub also has a community kitchen, a small auditorium, a counselling room and a reflection room. Dr Abdul Qader Al-aidaroos, chief executive of MTFA Darul Ihsan Orphanages, said many of its roughly 60 residents aged five to 21 have at least one parent who has been incarcerated, and they typically only meet them through teleconferencing. He plans to take the young residents to the mock prison cell at the MCS Hub to show them what life in prison actually looks like, in the hope that it “will encourage them to make wise decisions in life, and to appreciate the blessings that they currently have”. Those interested in attending the MCS Hub’s tours and sharing sessions by former offenders – which will begin in May – can register their interest at tinyurl.com/prisonlj or e-mail [email protected]

After getting into an accident along the Pan-Island Expressway (PIE), two drivers ended up in a fight at the side of the road. A man who witnessed the altercation posted a video of the incident on TikTok on his account, @m_tharan. He told Mothership that it took place in the afternoon of Jan. 31, near the Potong Pasir exit. Two cars — a yellow Mitsubishi and a black Audi — had apparently gotten into an accident. The drivers alighted from their respective vehicles and began to argue. One man was later arrested for drink driving.   The altercation   In the video, the men could be seen quarrelling with each other on the side of the road. One of the men, in a white T-shirt, pointed angrily to the other man dressed in black. The other man responded by throwing a punch, which sent the first man's phone flying to the ground.   Video from @m_tharan/TikTok   Both men then began gesturing violently at each other. One of them repeatedly said, "Lai (come)." The man in black tried to shove the other man, but was held off by the other man. This turned into a grappling match.   Video from @m_tharan/TikTok   Towards the end of the video, the man in white was seen throwing a punch at his opponent.   Video from @m_tharan/TikTok   The police later arrived to break up the fight, the witness said.   39-year-old driver arrested for drink driving: SPF   In response to Mothership's queries, the Singapore Police Force (SPF) confirmed that there was an accident involving two cars along Jalan Toa Payoh towards Macpherson Road. A 48-year-old male car driver sustained minor injuries but refused conveyance. Another 39-year-old male car driver was arrested for drink driving and was subsequently conveyed to the hospital. He is currently assisting with investigations for voluntarily causing hurt, SPF said. Police investigations are ongoing.