In an interview with Channel NewsAsia, SMU Associate Professor of Information Systems Archan Misra shared his views on the Smart Nation initiative (led by Dr Vivian Balakrishnan), which aims to put forward a plan to build a system that is capable of analysing and using data from one hundred million smart objects on a national scale. Associate Prof Misra said the difficulty lies in the creation of applications that can make use of the data for even simple municipal services and environmental monitoring. He noted that this is a very ambitious vision that would enable Singapore to leapfrog to be the showcase for the world. “Because you are talking about smart objects of very different capability – from maybe a little moisture sensor on the floor to a much more sophisticate sensor that you employ in a smart building, for example. They all need to scale up, they need to talk a common language, but it won’t be the same language throughout the entire system,” he added.