The Ministry of Home Affairs and the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) has awarded the Safe City Test Bed to Cassidian, a company dealing with defence and security solutions, together with its local partner NCS on Wednesday.

The test bed will be established and trialled in Singapore as a research and development initiative, which includes the development and live testing of innovative technologies and advanced analytics, such as video content, e-sensing and smart city sensors. This will provide added intelligence and operational benefits to government agencies involved - the police and civil defence forces - as well as public urban transport, environmental and utility agencies, with the objective of keeping Singapore safe and secure.

The goal of this test bed is to extract value out of existing silo sensors - unintegrated stand-alone sensors - by integrating and building advanced analytics into existing systems. Results from this test bed will be showcased at the World Cities Summit at Singapore in June 2014. The integrated Safe City concept emphasises on the fact that sensor data becomes more valuable when shared across different city agencies and applications, and when processed into actionable and intelligent information.

"This government assisted test bed programme will enable companies like Cassidian and NCS to use Singapore as a unique 'Living Laboratory', creating concepts and solutions which can be commercialised given the growing demand worldwide for Safe City solutions," said Mr Gian Yi-Hsen, director of the safety and security industry programme office at EDB.