Using data - big and small - the Singapore based Urbanetic Pte. Limited is setting the tone to develop a sustainable smart city for the fast-paced Phnom Penh – which is chasing its 2030 vision to make it a clean, green and competitive city offering a safe and quality lifestyle to its residents.

Under the Phnom Penh Sustainable City Plan 2018-2030 – it wants to slash poverty level, improve urban welfare, make it attractive to foreign investors and ensure urban competitiveness.

It has earmarked 48 projects under the plan, such as green lung, public areas, pedestrian walkways and jogging paths, to transform the bustling but congested city into a sustainable city.

Urbanetic is promoting its special digital tool to help policy makers and consumers understand the planning of a city, so that cities are developed in a sustainable and orderly manner and maintained as most liveable.

“We are keen to know how [ Phnom Penh] will execute the strategies and implement the proposed 48 projects. We are ready to partner and help them with tools to prioritise and decide which are the projects that makes more sense and in what sequence of implementation.

“For example, if you are picking a project to implement – it will be good to know, what will be the initial and life cycle cost versus impact ?” Urbanetic CEO Saibal Das Chowdhury told The Post.

Dynamic Technologies organised a two-day workshop to promote digital transformation of the urban environments – where over 100 participants – from policy makers to industry players participated.

The event was held in the capital from November 19 to 20.

Urbanetic is a data technology company that specialises in a sophisticated software that assimilates a range of data from various agencies and parks it on a single platform, which can be easily accessed by city planners, property developers, facilities managers, architects, investors and the citizens to explore, analyse and visualize the city and its features and functions, interactively in 3D.

“Our idea is to provide them the necessary enabling tools so they can efficiently and effectively implement the 48 projects. They need to have projects that are ‘shovel-ready’. Once the projects are shovel-ready, they can be offered to investors – both locally and globally using the platform,” he added.

Urban digitisation is slowly making waves as more countries tap into the abundant data to transform their cities, not only to create a healthy living environment but also to attract the much-needed cash-rich investors.

In a nutshell, Urbanetic software simplifies the complexity of modern urban planning to serve the government and the citizens at large, who can have a say on how to shape their future towns or cities.

“We are a data technology company for the built environment. We have a software platform which helps cities to plan, design, finance and manage its built environment. Our vision for the platform is to integrate the planning, design, financing and ongoing management activities post construction, such that viable ideas of development and redevelopment can be quickly approved and financed using the platform.

“As many cities around the world embark on digital transformation – the first step they are taking is to digitise all their information before they digitalise their services. Its digitisation first and then digitalisation.

“So you need to digitise land, property and building information – including the planning schemes and building codes.

“The advantage of using parametric modelling tools is in prioritising and analysing projects very quickly for their financial feasibility and impact - environmental, social and economical. Not every project is PPP [public private partnership] ready and not every project that is PPP viable is same in their implementation model,” he added.