Learnings

Amirah Ab Ghapar

This project has allowed me to put the various skills and knowledge I’ve obtained over the earlier weeks into a meaningful project. Although at times the project was arduous and we faced hiccups, my team was ready and willing to work together to overcome obstacles and make the project a success.

Analysing the TEL Stage 4 was of interest to me as I believe that there is a continuous need to improve accessibility if we are to strive for long-term net-zero emissions as part of the 2030 Singapore Green Plan. As such, through this course and project, I’ve learned that geographic information system applications are essential to urban planning and analyses. They allow us to obtain deep insights into the pros and cons of developments and hence, give us opportunities to plan better for the future.

Gideon Ler

We have learnt how to conduct catchment area analysis of the TEL stations using QNEAT3 and learnt the proper steps that are needed to delineate catchment areas, from data preparation of the different walking paths to extracting of the buffer layers. We learnt that to build a catchment area based on distance taken to walk, we had to take into consideration an average person’s walking speed, the different walkable paths as well as the average distance a person walks before feeling exhausted. All these factors were necessary to produce a realistic catchment area study analysis.

Yong Jun Jie

We have learnt the need to prudently ensure public expenditure are justified and accountable for. Since taxpayers’ money are being used to fund the construction of infrastructure projects, like the TEL, a cost-benefit analysis should have been done to examine the viability of the projects. Moreover, this cost-benefit analysis should also be presented to the public in order to build a convincing case as to why should public resources be spend on the projects. In the context of TEL Stage 4, the stations are relatively under-utilized and some say shouldn’t have been built at all.

That being said, this project provided us with valuable the hands-on experience in analyzing a real-world problem as well as the technical competency in QGIS to conduct our own analysis in the future, be it for other projects or for our full-time work.