Noisy roads choked with cars and never-ending stretches of beautiful beaches don’t really go hand-in-hand. But they co-exist uneasily in Langkawi, one of Malaysia’s popular island getaways, especially during peak holiday periods.

Telekom Malaysia (TM)’s enterprise and public sector business arm, TM ONE, has created several 5G-powered solutions to tackle this issue and ensure visitors enjoy a smooth journey throughout their holiday. “When you talk about smart tech, it’s not about the technology, but your experience when you touch down in Langkawi,” Maznan Deraman, TM ONE’s innovative solutions head, recently told GovInsider.

TM is testing 11 5G applications in Langkawi in the first half of 2020. Here is how three of them can help transform Langkawi’s roads.

Smart parking

Malaysia already has a series of options for parking apps that make fee payments easier. But TM ONE’s latest smart parking endeavour sets itself apart from the rest. “For the normal parking app we’re used to today, users have to select a parking bay and tell the system how long they’ll be parking for,” explained Azrin Aris, Director of Products & Innovation at TM ONE at a recent media showcase. But this can be inaccurate, and TM ONE is trialling a new feature to reduce human error so the correct fee can be charged.

TM ONE’s parking app shows users live footage of the parking lots, captured by high-definition cameras in the area. Instead of manually keying in the parking lot number, “users just need to tap on the phone to record the exact location of their parking spot,” he said.

The app will create a seamless experience for drivers – they can start looking for parking spaces and book it through the app even before setting off in their car. Drivers also don’t have to specify how long they will be parking for. Sensors in the parking lots will detect when the car has driven off, and the app will charge the appropriate fees automatically.

The app also helps traffic wardens work more efficiently. They can identify cases of illegal parking through the footage captured on the app, without manually checking up on parked cars. Officials can also find out how long a car has been illegally parked in a spot, so they can issue the appropriate fines.

“We can also look out for traffic violations with the camera,” said Maznan. Traffic wardens can study the footage to look for wayward drivers going the wrong direction in a one-way street, or rogue motorcyclists riding on the pedestrians’ path.

Smart traffic light

Langkawi’s roads can get quite busy, especially during peak traveling seasons. TM ONE has devised a smart traffic light that regulates traffic flow to shorten wait times.

IoT sensors installed in traffic lights measure patterns such as the average waiting time and how many cars are turning right or going straight. “Previously we didn’t have this information [about traffic conditions]. If we wanted to do this, we had to send people to the roadside to count,” said Maznan.

“The traffic light then uses this data to adjust the green time period. For instance, the traffic light would flash green for a longer time when there are more vehicles passing through. This would mean less congestion, quicker journeys, less fuel consumption, and a smaller carbon footprint,” explained Maznan.

The traffic light also comes with a built-in contingency plan, just in case the IoT sensors malfunction. “We use the predicted values to change the default setting, so it gives time for authorities to fix the sensors while not heavily impacting user experience,” shared Azrin.

Smart vehicle management

Telekom Research & Development (TM R&D), TM ONE’s sister company and TM’s innovation arm, has developed a system for car rental companies to manage their fleet. “Langkawi is a tourist Island and car rentals are the most used mode of transport,” explained Dr. Sharlene Thiagarajah, CEO of TM R&D.

The new tech allows car rental companies to track each vehicle’s usage pattern in real time, using GPS that runs on 5G networks. The system also grades each employee’s driving behaviour by giving a score for each drive.

“Car rentals will know who’s driving your car, where they are going, if there has been harsh braking or harsh cornering, or if there is excessive idling,” said Dr Sharlene. “Car rental operators will then understand the usage pattern and maybe create new business models with the customers.”.

This can change the way insurance companies charge for car rentals as well. “Today, most of us who drive are paying for insurance 24/7. Imagine if we have data to show insurance companies that we are only driving two or three hours a day,” Dr Sharlene said. “Insurance companies could perhaps use this information to offer more tailored packages to customers,” she explained.

These three solutions have the potential to transform Langkawi’s roads and ultimately, its city planning. All the data collected by these systems can be consolidated on a dashboard so officials can understand the city’s needs better. “We want to see where vehicles are going and where people are congregating,” said Dr Sharlene. These are the insights that will help us plan better and safer cities.

“TM One is the main agency pioneering the foundation of our nation’s digital infrastructure. Through this strategic collaboration, it greatly helps Ipoh City Council in managing the city more efficiently and in an orderly manner,” – Dato’ Rumaizi bin Baharin, Ipoh Mayor.

With the blend of heritage, food and great scenery, the Lonely Planet ranked Ipoh as one of the best cities in Asia to visit. As a hotspot for tourism, the bustling city provides abundant business opportunities. The city has harnessed this potential by increasing the readiness of its digital infrastructure for mobile and fixed broadband internet.

Keeping this in mind, Ipoh envisions becoming one of the first smart cities in Malaysia by 2030. The Smart City 2030 action plan targets seven domains – Smart Living, Smart Environment, Smart Governance, Smart People, Smart Digital Infrastructure, Smart Economy and Smart Mobility – to effectively address urbanisation challenges faced by the people of Ipoh and to realise Ipoh as a Green and Low Carbon City by 2030. We are embarking on a journey to prepare for a digital future, with TM One acting as the digital enabler and provider to assist the city in its transformation.

In conjunction with the City Leap Summit 2022, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was established between The Ipoh City Council and TM One. The strategic collaboration includes several initiatives that are planned and will be implemented:

1) Smart Traffic Management with Analytics Services (STARS)

One of the most remarkable achievements is the implementation of smart traffic lights. TM One’s STARS leverages AI-enabled sensors at intersections to measure the average waiting time and identify vehicle motions, thereby adjusting green light duration based on real-time congestion, and improve the journey time. This solution also help to reduce the carbon emitted by the vehicle that is using the junction and this is in line with Ipoh Green City Vision to achieve low carbon city. Additional to the benefits, STARS is a single monitoring platform that provides relevant personnel with a centralised viewing of road conditions and equipped with real-time fault notification that triggers alarms through the Telegram chat application. This will allow the relevant personnel to take swift actions and dispatching manpower on-site when needed.

As a result, the smart traffic light solution has improved traffic flow in one of the busiest streets, Jalan Sultan Idris, by 51%. This solution also has led to a 7,500 kg decrease in carbon dioxide emissions in a month – in line with Ipoh’s goal to be a Low Carbon City by 2030.

2) TM One Mobile Field Workforce (FORCE)

FORCE satisfies the need for a fluid system to connect the call centre agents, dispatchers and service technicians to attend to citizens’ complaints and inquiries for better communication and coordination. It allows the teams to promptly respond to public complaints and emergencies by accessing real-time ticket statuses. Also, the all-in-one platform automates task scheduling and team management, tracks real-time progress of on-site maintenance and provides access to customer profiles on the go – modernizing the city’s field service solution. FORCE is envisioned to be the system support for MBI’s existing myAduan@MBI citizen app to improve its customer experience, better cost management, and internal resource management.

3) Call Centre

The Ipoh City Council aspires to establish its first digital call centre via outsourcing. The digital call centre aims to solve the challenges of  handling multilingual support requests and reduce abandoned call rates, while elevating critical issues to relevant parties when necessary. Consequently, the city can free up resources and optimise costs, while ensuring the best customer service for the people of Ipoh.

TM One Business Services (BPO) with more than 15 years of contact centre experience in Malaysia, leveraging on our Center of Expertise will be sharing the best practice; which aligned to the Industry Standards and Best Practices to help Ipoh City Council to establish the citizen engagement centre and ultimately elevate the citizen experience to the higher level.

Ipoh aims to be one of the first cities in Malaysia to enable 5G, and TM One plans to support this vision with the provision of free 5G wifi in selected areas. Additionally, a digital fibre connectivity superhighway and smart surveillance systems is being planned for Ipoh citizens.

Smart technologies help Ipoh save cost, shorten commutes, reduce carbon emission rates, and most importantly boost the quality of life for the people of Ipoh. In the long term, smart cities will spur higher citizen and government engagement as they begin to remove the communication barriers and increase the trust between citizens and officials. With the great synergy between both parties, Dato’ Rumaizi aspires to achieve more milestones in collaboration with TM One.

“My hope is that together with TM One, we will explore even more opportunities and smart technologies towards enhancing lives for the people of Ipoh.” – Dato’ Rumaizi bin Baharin, Ipoh Mayor.

Five years ago, the conversation surrounding smart cities was in its infancy, with most topics revolving around demystifying the technology behind them. Today, cities around the world have moved past demystification and are taking great strides in implementation. Globally, there are several shining examples we can turn to for inspiration;

• Vancouver’s initiative in setting up accessible Wi-Fi in 755 public spaces, along with wired bike-sharing and video feeds,
• Hong Kong’s enhancement of digital security with biometric measures employing face and voice recognition across the city,
• Seoul’s installation of 50,000 sensors supporting the IoT (Internet of Things) to transfer urban life data into big data analytics.

While we are witnessing the transformation of several cities worldwide, what are the required factors that make a city ‘smart’?

6 key success factors of a smart city

1) Excellent vision

Developing a smart city is not a task that can be sustained with an ad-hoc approach. Instead, a holistic vision is required to steer decision-making and guide action plans toward implementing realistic solutions that deliver tangible results that can enhance the lifestyles and living quality of all citizens within the city.

The Malaysia Smart City Framework (MSCF) has offered several initiatives such as MyDigital, GTMP and JENDELA as official ‘textbook approaches’ or suggested priorities. Local councils or Pihak Berkuasa Tempatan (PBTs) can refer to these initiatives in developing the smart city vision that best fits their cities.

2) Solutions that realistically solve pain points of citizens

Behind the development of a successful smart city, lies an excellent core vision that is developed based on the citizens’ real-life experiences. The application of technology is moot if it does not bring tangible benefit to its end users.

The common occurrence of pilot projects being abandoned, with selected technologies being seriously under-utilised, is a result of decision-making without a clear understanding of the real-life pain points experienced by the end-user, the citizens themselves. For a smart city to truly elevate our lifestyles and quality of living, the solutions we choose must be people-centric and based on actual needs.

3) Sufficient funding

Critically, PBTs will require sufficient funding to set the ‘smart city’ ball rolling smoothly. However, based on a survey conducted during the previous TM One City Leap Summit 2020, only 2.6% of PBTs surveyed indicated that they have sufficient funds, while 42% of them responded that they required funding assistance.

While procuring sufficient funds may be an issue, we can look to Indonesia to overcome the same challenge. Under West Java’s Digital Villages Theme, the West Java Provincial Government started their digital transformation of rural fisheries by installing basic smart auto-feeders in 4289 ponds across West Java. Instead of immediately using high-end tech solutions, the deployment of basic technology allowed the fishermen to empower their own productivity, resulting in a 30 to 100% increase in earnings and effectively generating their own initial capital for more cutting-edge solutions. On top of that, there was the added benefit of increasing digital literacy among the fishermen to be more receptive to newer technological solutions.

4) A great project management office

With a vision outlined and action plans identified against the available funding, the next key factor in creating a successful smart city lies in the capabilities of the project management office to turn the vision into reality. Key traits of a great project management office are:

1. A strong “citizens-come-first” mindset: PBTs need to commit to continually steer the smart city vision toward solving the needs of citizens.
2. A spirit of partnership & collaboration: PBTs will need the support, guidance and inputs from several parties such as academics, urban planners and tech experts to fully execute their vision.
3. A definitive but flexible blueprint: Smart cities aren’t built in a day. A project management office needs definitive roles, regular review processes and transparent policies to ensure that its smart city development journey is sustainable and future-proof.  

5) Buy-in from all stakeholders

It takes more than a day and more than just a single person to build a smart city. In fact, stakeholder management is critical in garnering support and alignment toward the outlined vision of smart city development. Effective stakeholder management requires a deep understanding of all parties who will benefit from implementing smart cities. These benefits include more efficient public services for citizens, data-driven disaster mitigation strategies for local governments, and more diverse revenue streams for investors.

Communication and outreach are vital in building the required understanding among stakeholders. Examples of campaigns designed to encourage stakeholder involvement include PLANMalaysia’s Libat Urus Pemegang Taruh involving government agencies, stakeholders and research teams for cities such as Ipoh, Johor Bahru and the Federal Territories.

Learning from our Indonesian neighbours again, the West Java Provincial Government has taken on a ‘Pentahelix Collaboration’ model, with initiatives geared towards encouraging collaboration and participation from authoritative bodies, media bodies, businesses, academics and local communities.

6) Good governance

Good governance is the final thread capable of tying all of the above factors together. Implementing strong top-down leadership and transparent policies can crystallise each PBTs smart city vision. Good governance can also help develop sustainable funding schemes according to each PBTs needs while delivering the talent required to project management offices. It will also support communications campaigns to encourage the stakeholder buy-in needed for successful execution.

After several years of conversation, the time is ripe for Malaysia to transform its cities. The rakyat already stands to gain much more from a smart city transformation. With the effects of climate change already rearing its ugly head at our mobility, agricultural production and air quality, Malaysia is ready to accept solutions that promise to solve day-to-day difficulties. However, the advancement of smart city technologies stands to take us even further beyond problem-fixing – smart city technology now can elevate Malaysia towards a cleaner, safer, more sustainable, higher-quality way of living.

Many governments, state councils and local authorities talk about the potential of smart cities and how they unlock new possibilities in a hyper-connected urban environment. Ideas such as the sky being filled with flying taxis, robots sweeping the streets and rooftop farming on every building may seem like the epitome of human civilisation. But, is this the future we seek? The various studies into smart city concepts all lead us to one key observation, intelligence technologies will play a far more significant role in our daily routine as compared to massively disruptive ideas.

A brief look at the global smart city landscape reveals good progress in making our cities intelligent. Examples of the international efforts to build the foundations of next-gen digital playgrounds include prominent cities:

• Barcelona boasts over 20,000 active telemetry sensors to capture surrounding data;
• Copenhagen with a network of 380 intelligent traffic lights;
• Cape Town reducing local crimes rates using 42 round-the-clock cameras and many others.

Malaysia is rising up to its global peers on this front. The national policies under the Malaysia Smart City Framework (MSCF), which includes MyDigital, IR4RD, JENDELA and GTMP, is set to enable the translation of blueprints into meaningful action plans.

Setting the course

From a survey held during the previous City Leap Summit 2020, TM One collected insightful grassroots data from 33 local councils or Pihak Berkuasa Tempatan (PBTs) on smart city implementations. Results displayed that most respondents were not ready to turn plans into actions due to gaps in infrastructure, shortage of financial resources, and below-average talent capabilities.

In addition, PBTs in Malaysia focused their efforts on basic systemic issues surrounding security, safety and transportation that have already been experimented on in other countries. Out of all the solutions introduced to local leaders, smart security & surveillance, smart traffic lights and smart parking systems were the top 3 priorities to help citizens achieve a better quality of life.

While the results may reflect the state of mind two years ago, we need to think bigger. A powerful catalyst for PBTs is to reimagine how their cities can create better living experience for Malaysians. While the extensive list of smart indicators provided by ISO 37122 may appear intimidating, the journey toward building smart cities begins with a single step forward.

A look at smarter cities

Many around the world have already mastered of the art of building smart cities. So, as we celebrate the remarkable technological developments in major cities worldwide, we should also learn from them. Here are a few examples of cities that have embodied the critical success factors that contribute to a winning smart city:

• Rio de Janeiro takes a holistic approach toward smart city development by developing a common IT infrastructure and integrated platform to enable a myriad of applications to gain a more comprehensive view of the city.
• Copenhagen prioritises a “citizens-come-first” mindset and translates that customer-centric focus into long term infrastructures and initiatives, enabling citizens to become co-creators of their future city.
• Hangzhou in China encourages public-private partnerships to harness the mutually-benefiting capabilities in designing and implementing smart city projects.
• Seoul embraces an open culture, making city datasets and platforms freely available to citizens and businesses so that they can leverage accurate data to create innovative solutions.
• Singapore, our neighbour, focuses heavily on government efficiency and ensures that all smart city initiatives align with the larger municipality or government programs.

TM One, the trusted partner

TM One is in a prime position to support the government’s vision for smart and sustainable cities around the nation. While fancy solutions may capture headlines, we understand the importance of a strong foundation.  

We provide an unparalleled level of robust and secured digital connectivity, coupled with a solid digital infrastructure. This includes Hyperscaled intelligent cloud solution and data centre infrastructure and services that protect data sovereignty.

As TM One continues to build solutions for the needs of tomorrow, we offer a wide array of smart city solutions to address the immediate PBT needs of today. Smart city applications, dashboards, smart street and traffic lights, smart parking systems and deep surveillance are great examples of our market-ready solutions to bring our customers closer to smart and sustainable cities. In fact, 25 PBTs around Malaysia have already deployed our smart surveillance systems to keep our citizens and utility infrastructure safe.

The icing on the cake is our integrated operation centre (IOC) which is a robust platform designed to efficiently consolidate various data types from networks and Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices to intelligent applications. This integrated monitoring system will enable local governments to make quick decisions and changes in response to real-time conditions.

TM One is the one-stop hub to support Malaysia’s smart city needs

What are the next steps?

While our solutions are ready to help PBTs in their mission to roll out smart city projects, we encourage a more structured approach.

The first step is to design a smart city blueprint that narrows down the PBTs’ concerns. We no longer need country-level frameworks; we need immediate action plans. Start by finding local priorities and focus on the key problems that would best benefit the citizens when addressed.

Next, implement solutions that have quick wins and solve the core issue. Take the initiative to experiment with niche smart city solutions and validate their benefits.

Last but not least, be open to exploring different types of collaboration models. Often, private-public partnerships are good ways to leverage the unique strengths of two distinct organizations to create a powerful solution. TM One is committed to helping Malaysia move toward smart and sustainable cities for a better future.

Md Farabi Yusoff, Head of Smart City from PLANMalaysia delivered his presentation at TM One’s City Leap Summit 2002. This article summarizes the key takeaways from his address. 

“Smartness” is not a measure of how advanced or complex the technology being adopted is, but how well the solutions solve the society’s problems and address existential challenges”

– YB Datuk Seri Reezal Merican bin Naina Merican, Minister of Housing & Local Government

Smart City has been a hot topic of discussion for the past decade. With the advent of IR 4.0, the technology underpinning smart cities has matured significantly. Over the years, the Pihak Berkuasa Tempatan (PBT)’s understanding of the potential benefits to be reaped through the implementation of smart cities has also evolved. The next big challenge is in making the implementation of smart cities successful. There are two key imperatives in making this possible, viz., (a) developing a holistic smart city plan and (b) a blueprint for turning fundamental concepts into action. 

Developing a holistic smart city

Smart cities cannot be developed in silos – it requires a network of connected solutions that are effectively integrated, with data feeding into each element to ensure all facets of city-dwelling are elevated to the same level of capability and efficiency. An effective smart city is both holistic in nature and all-encompassing. The network of connected solutions also needs to be functional, providing tangible solutions to actual issues faced by citizens.

Even at a conceptual level, holisticness and people-centricity need to be embedded into smart city development to guide decision-making and ensure the solutions chosen are people-oriented and realistic. For this to happen, smart cities require careful planning and development, with each decision accounting for infrastructure, city operations and digital capabilities to create the solutions capable of elevating all elements of city-dwelling.

PBTs should prioritise taking this holistic approach into the conceptual framework of smart cities:

• Priority 1 – Users: To ensure functionality and usefulness, the city residents themselves, along with their actual habits, are what should drive the how-to implementation of digital services and applications. This is the core principle of a People-Centric Smart City.

• Priority 2 – Services: Envision strategies and solutions to enhance a city’s information systems, digital applications, and electronic services linked to all-digital economy sectors and social services. Enhancing service capabilities through digital integration is the booster shot to improving a smart city’s quality of life and efficiency.

• Priority 3 – Data: Effective data management acts as both the backbone and crystal ball of smart cities.  It enables the generation of meaningful insights used to improve services. Effective management of smart cities’ data also enhances capabilities to plan for the future based on trends displayed through the data (e.g. flood mitigation measures or planning roadworks based on traffic patterns). To reap both benefits, a powerful, integrated data platform and analytics system is required and must be capable of collecting, processing, verifying, organising, analysing, integrating and enriching the data obtained from information systems, city sources and public networks.

• Priority 4 – Digital infrastructure: In creating services designed for citizens and generating meaningful data, the right infrastructure must be present to support the technology needed. This encompasses networks and telecoms systems, data storage and processing centres, data privacy centres, etc., to provide the required connectivity to bring smart cities online.

Turning fundamental concepts into action

While a holistic, all-encompassing conceptual framework underpins smart cities’ strategic development, implementing the said framework presents an entirely different challenge. Concrete action plans based on a flexible, adaptable blueprint is the surest way forward in making smart city initiatives a success.

In creating an adaptable blueprint, PBTs need to ensure that all the 4 fundamentals of smart city planning are covered. While the overall action plan can be carried out incrementally through stages, each stage needs rigorous review. Subsequent actions need to be adapted to fit needs of citizens and PBTs accordingly as new findings arise across the journey. The blueprint can broadly be classified into three distinct phases.

• Stage 1: Early Analysis:  The step-by-step phases for the analysis phase include:
  • Review current agendas & policies
  • Conduct urban challenges assessment
  • Carry out our “smart initiatives” assessment
  • Create tailored benchmarks for smart city
  • Assess citizen readiness level
  • SWOT analysis

• Stage 2: Preparing the action plan: Following the analysis phase, the action plan needs to be developed. The steps involved include:
  • Create specific smart city aspirations
  • Define quick vs long term wins in smart city action plan
  • Define roles and streamline organisation chart
  • Deployment of digital infrastructure
  • Pre-planning development of Integrated Operations Centre
  • Data integration

• Stage 3: Roll out and monitor:
  • Initial execution of smart city
  • Establish pioneer projects
  • Project assessment and improvement
  • Adaptation to public
  • Comprehensive mass roll-out
  • Attain smart city accreditation

The role of PLANMalaysia in the Smart City agenda

As the Federal Department of town and country planning for Peninsular Malaysia, PLANMalaysia’s role in the smart city agenda is to guide and support local councils in realising their smart city aspirations. Our work encompasses the four areas which are detailed below.   

Creating Smart City blueprints: Effective smart city planning and implementation cannot be one-off decisions. Each element needs to feed into one another to create a network of systems and solutions. With that, PBTs need a blueprint that strikes a balance in being both definitive and flexible, and to assist decision-making when it comes to choosing solutions and deciding ways forward – this is where PLANMalaysia comes in, to guide PBTs on blueprint formation and ensure decisions made are holistic and adaptable to future needs.

Running Malaysia Urban Observatory (MUO): Data collection and interpretation are integral to smart cities. MUO is a data-sharing platform that enables public data sharing and supports decision-making. PLANMalaysia’s custody of MUO ensures that all local councils can benefit from the federal department’s collaboration and support, effectively interpreting public data in enhancing services tied to smart city systems. 

SmartCity Accreditations: Involved in the makings of the standards or benchmarks for smart cities and data integration. To ensure usability of data and effectiveness of smart city implementation, certain criteria needs to be met to ensure systems chosen are in fact beneficial, functional and can be used to generate the right insights to enhance public services.

Increasing Awareness: One of the vital challenges to smart city implementation is stakeholder management, and there are many. PLANMalaysia endeavours to manage vital stakeholders by running several campaigns and programs to align all relevant stakeholders, from investors to local authorities to local communities. This fuels understanding of the ultimate goal of transforming into a smart city and the benefits that stand to be gained by all stakeholders.

When addressing smart cities in the past, we may have been uncertain of what was needed. We may have not fully grasped the technology or were not aware of what we wanted out of it. Today, we are in a much more secure position – enriched by knowledge, alongside the maturation of the technology, we are more ready than ever to be elevated towards a smarter future. The road ahead may not be simple or straightforward, but we are equipped with guides, blueprints and action plans which are both symbols and roadmaps to success. They represent our common goals is our binding objective in uniting all stakeholders towards a smarter, healthier, more sustainable Malaysia.