Over half of the world’s population now lives in cities. Especially in emerging regions such as Southeast Asia, urbanisation has been rising in tandem with the rapid economic growth that has characterised the region. However, as urbanisation continues, sustaining a good quality of life will prove to be a challenge, with liveability in the long term possibly being more adversely impacted the denser a city gets.
As Southeast Asia’s most advanced nation, Singapore has been able to manage its urban development successfully, even with over half of its population living in urban areas. Nevertheless, ensuring a long-lasting high quality of life for its people has meant that Singapore, which perennially faces land scarcity, has needed to prioritize developing not horizontally, but vertically.
Singapore’s ‘Vertical’ Solution for
its Urban Development
Vertical mobility solutions such as elevators and escalators enable people to be transported in and around buildings daily. Since their introduction in the 19th century, they now represent key elements in much of urban architecture. In Singapore, they are especially crucial parts of the nation’s infrastructure.
However, it is not enough for Singapore to have an abundance of these vertical mobility solutions. To ensure that people can stay connected across vertical distances efficiently, they must adopt intelligent and energy-efficient technologies to ensure seamless operation for both the people using them and building operators maintaining them.
The accessibility that these smart and efficient systems provide is especially crucial for those with special mobility requirements. These groups include senior citizens, who are becoming a larger population segment in Singapore, as well as people with mobility challenges who should not be excluded from fully participating in society.
There are 70,000 passenger elevators and 7,000 escalators in Singapore, revealing just how important these components are in keeping the nation’s urban engine moving. With their ubiquity, it is often easy to take for granted the safety of mobility solutions. However, when strict standards of safety are not adhered to, frequent accidents can occur on both elevators and escalators. In many cases, these accidents occur due to mechanical failure.
It is thus imperative that the technology behind elevators and escalators be designed with optimised durability. This is important to ensure that they can safely deliver the best operational efficiency for both users and operators.
As an organisation that has been powering good for over a century through innovative solutions, Hitachi has been helping people to get to where they need to be each and every day with complete assurance of their safety. Our elevators and escalators can respond to varied building applications and designs flexibly. We do this by providing maintenance, modernisation and related services to guarantee the secure and comfortable operation of our elevators and escalators at all times, which are key to helping us to continue supporting vertical mobility in growing cities.
At the same time, these improvements in accessibility and convenience must also come with careful consideration of the environment. By leveraging advanced data analytics and combining them with predictive maintenance, Hitachi tracks the operations of our elevator and escalator systems, in addition to their energy usage. This ensures Hitachi can facilitate safe and seamless mobility while leaving behind as little of an environmental footprint as possible. By minimising the external impact of our solutions, we can help to ensure that both our solutions and the environments around them last longer for future generations.
Offers Security & Comfort
Minimises External Impact
Promotes Green Living
With the world now advancing at a breakneck pace, sustainable mobility is key to ensuring these developments last. Especially for vertical mobility solutions, cutting-edge innovations and approaches can optimise their usage and energy expenditure, creating a solid foundation for Singapore to move safely, securely, and sustainably for decades to come.
Forwards and upwards, Hitachi is powering good by enhancing the quality of life of Singaporeans, for today’s generation and the next.
Date of Release: February 2022
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