About Us

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Our team consist of four members Alvin, Yicong, Sharlene and Rachel respectively. We are from Temasek Polytechnic, School of Engineering doing a diploma in Business Process and System Engineering. We are currently in our final year and competing in the SLA Spatial Challenge 2012, analysis category and this is our official GeoBlog. We will be blogging about our learning journey with SLA over the next few months, do check back on this space for more updates.

Monday, 30 April 2012

Introducing SG Walker

Today we will be introducing to you our project for the SLA Spatial Challenge 2012.
Our project title is "SG WALKER" and our tagline is "A walk you remember".

So what's SG WALKER?

Brief Description


SG Walker is a self guided walking tour around Singapore. Without the help of a tour guide, users are able to explore around Singapore. SG Walker uses GPS to locate the current location of the user and plan the tour around the area. Users are able to either choose from the standard walking routes provided by us in the application or customize their own walking routes base on their interest. 


Background


"Singapore is boring", wrote a writer of CNNGo.com. Singapore may be a small country, but it is still a hassle when it comes’ to planning where to go and some people do run out of places to go in Singapore.


It was written in Singaporedonkey wordpress that even our very own Prime Minister, MM Lee, commented on November 22, 2006 that it is good to escape Singapore from time to time. It’s quite boring.

An article on Mumbrella posted on March 8, 2012 tells us that Singapore is trying to fight for the city-state’s reputation for being a boring stop-over destination and to furthermore increase and maintain the tourist arrival rates. The article is titled as “Singapore tries to persuade Aussies it’s not boring by telling them to ‘Get lost’.” The Singapore Tourism Board’s Oceania director Sandra Leong told Mumbrella "We know that a lot of people think Singapore is a boring place - that it's not a very sexy destination, and is just a clean, convenient place to stop over before moving on. That's exactly the perception we're trying to change".


As shown in singstats there was a fall in tourist arrival in Singapore from 2007 to 2009 from 10.2 million to 9.6 million. This is most likely due to the 2007-2008 financial crisis as people are more reluctant to travel in that period of time as they have less spending power in that period. however, there was a rise in tourist visit from 2009-2012 from 9.6 million to 13 million. This shows that the market is recovering from the financial crisis. And the significance increase is largely due to the opening of Resort World Sentosa and Marina Bay Sand.

As reported on an article posted on The Straits Times, March 24, 2012 that despite the uncertain economic environment, Singapore is expecting tourist arrivals to grow up to 10 per cent this year. The forecast for the year is 13.5 million to 14.5 million visitors, who are expected to stimulate the local economy to the tune of $23 billion to $24 billion.

But, how is Singapore going to maintain and increase the growing tourist arrivals and to ensure that all tourist who are stopping by Singapore for a holiday to explore almost the entire Singapore especially the interesting tourist attractions, places that cannot be miss if they are in Singapore, etc and to have a pleasant and wonderful time in town instead of having a perception that Singapore is a boring place?

The top 10 gated attractions for 2011 were Sentosa Island, Universal Studios Singapore, Singapore Zoo, Singapore Flyer, Skyline Luge, Science Centre Singapore, Underwater World Singapore, Song of the Sea, Night Safari, and the Marina Bay Sands Sky Park. However I am sure that there are many more attractions in Singapore that most tourists are unsure about waiting for them to explore.

Thus, this is when SG WALKER comes into the picture.


Purpose


The purpose of this project is to reach out to everyone, introducing ArcGIS to the public and encourage users to use it. Thus, for ArcGIS to reach out to the mass, a creative application proposal, SG Walker is the best way for public to appreciate ArcGIS. This is because SG Walker is not a onetime usage analysis; it allows users to have repeat usage and to interact with it when they use SG Walker.


The purpose of SG Walker is to guide tourist to get around Singapore. The application has routes planned out for the tourist in accordance to their interest. Be it, shopping, sight-seeing or even heritage interest, we have routes planned out for them.  The application will also give tourist the freedom of customizing their own routes.


Objectives 


Our objectives of this application is to apply ARC GIS to analyze
-          The shortest route for users to get around the destinations on foot
-          The most direct route for users so as to avoid detours
-          The places of interest within a certain distance so that users will know how far they will have to walk.


Application Icon



That'a all we have for you today, we will be updating more soon.

Love,
BizEngineers 

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