SINGAPORE: Home Affairs and Law Minister K Shanmugam said Singapore will need to constantly leverage on science and technology to enhance operational capabilities in homeland security.
One way is to work with youths and tertiary institutions to get them to take "a serious role" in helping to make Singapore safe against security threats.
A group of
polytechnic and university students have topped the Novel Automobile
Barrier Challenge, which was first launched in September last year. They
beat 26 other entries to emerge as the top three winners.
The
challenge requires participants to come up with a kind of barrier that
will effectively stop a moving vehicle travelling at 60 kilometres per
hour, from crashing into a building or a facility.
It is
understood that this is the first time that the Home Affairs Ministry
has organised such a challenge with a tertiary institution and it said
it is the first of many to come.
The winning team from the
National University of Singapore walked away with a cash prize of
S$8,000. One of the team members, Mr Tan Chun Liang, who is a PhD
student from the School of Design and Environment, explains how the
barrier works.
Mr Tan said: "The design is extremely portable,
and we actually designed it so it does not look like a barrier...car
hits metal, metal hits ground and ground hits spike. Car stops."
Some of the other ideas received may also be adopted by the ministry but feasibility studies will still need to be conducted.
Dr
Lee Fook Kay, Chief Science and Technology Officer with the Home
Affairs Ministry, said: "We have barriers but a lot of the barriers are
fixtures that we put in the building. Those which are more portable are
not so effective, so that's why we are reaching out to the students to
see whether they can come up with good solutions. And I think students
also tend to look at the economical way of looking at the problem. So
they may not be very expensive solutions but they work.
"If you
look at events, people do put barricades but some of these are pretty
heavy to transport and they are quite a burden. So the ideas that the
students have come up with are really very novel. They are deployable
and very portable. Students tend to really think out of the box."
A
Memorandum of Understanding with NUS is also on the cards to facilitate
sharing of information and ideas in science and technology.
Mr
Shanmugam said: "MHA aims to stay ahead of evolving security threats,
and ensure that the Home Team is always prepared in the face of an
ever-changing security environment. A strong partnership with our
educational institutions facilitates capability, expertise development
and promotes mutual interest."
Mr Shanmugam added that such partnerships will take Singapore's homeland security capabilities to the next level.
-CNA/ac