SINGAPORE — The Republic needs to make greater use of information technology (IT) to boost public safety and security, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said yesterday.

For example, while the country has started building its own network of sensors, it has yet to weave all the different systems together.

This will be a major project for Singapore, Mr Lee said in his National Day Rally speech.

Citing the Little India riot as a learning point, he said that when it happened in December 2013, “we were caught a little flat-footed”.

The riot erupted after a mob turned violent, following an accident in which a private bus ran over a pedestrian at the junction of Race Course Road and Hampshire Road. There were too few CCTV cameras in the area and the authorities had to turn to social media to gather footage posted by members of the public, said Mr Lee.

He also recounted a recent meeting of the Research, Innovation and Enterprise Council, which he chairs.

A council member expressed surprise at the fact that despite Singapore’s reputation as one of the safest cities in the world, it was trailing behind other cities in using IT to make the island safe. For instance, after the Boston bombings in the United States in April 2013, the police used CCTV, social media, licence plate readers and other information to identify the two bombers within three days.

In Singapore, efforts to build a network of sensors, especially through CCTV, started some time ago, Mr Lee said. The police have installed CCTV at public housing void decks and lift landings to tackle the loan shark problem. Fewer cases of “owe money, pay money” are seen these days — a sign of success, he added.

Other agencies also have their own devices: PUB uses sensors to detect water levels in drains, while the Land Transport Authority uses cameras to monitor traffic conditions and deter illegal parking. Even hotels, shopping centres and office buildings have their own surveillance cameras.

“But we have not brought all the different systems together,” said Mr Lee. Since the Little India riot, he noted that there has been progress in building an integrated national sensor network, with the installation of more CCTVs in public areas.

“We’re making ‘every lamp-post a smart lamp-post’, able to mount different types of sensors,” he said.

Information from various sources — the authorities, hotels, commercial buildings and handphones — is being combined. “We’re learning to analyse this combined data, for example, using artificial intelligence to automatically flag when something unusual is happening.”