Singapore sets up new centre to enhance risk assessment capability
By S Ramesh, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 19 March 2007 1447 hrs

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SINGAPORE : Tackling a security threat, even before it becomes an issue to be dealt with - this is what Singapore hopes to do with a new centre which will be ready in August.

The centre will be manned by seven engineers and scientists.

Their main task is to enhance the country's ability to assess risk and improve Singapore's capability to weed out threats.

This was announced at the first symposium on Risk Assessment and Horizon Scanning on Monday.

It was opened by Deputy Prime Minister S Jayakumar.

Risk assessment and horizon scanning, or RAHS, has been part and parcel of Singapore's security landscape since 2004.

Professor S Jayakumar, DPM and Co-ordinating National Security Minister, said: "It has the potential to be a strategic planning process to facilitate agency collaboration and to put in place a whole-of-government framework to think about a complex and uncertain future. RAHS has provided a strategic opportunity to change mindsets at various levels of government and embrace whole-of-government approach to horizon scanning."

In maritime security, for instance, Singapore has been working with the US Joint Forces to develop a risk assessment system that could piece together information on ownership, cargo, crew and voyage details and also detect the fact that a particular ship had stowaways on board.

John Petersen, President, The Arlington Institute, said: "Just identify weak signals and early indicators - I think all you have to is find one significant weak signal... that you otherwise wouldn't have seen... and it's worth what you spend for. We have tried to design it so that it is very obvious and easy to use but like any new piece of technology you have to go through a little bit of training process."

For the past 15 years, the Singapore government has been using what is called scenario planning to think about what could possibly happen in the future.

Now security planners feel that with a very rapidly changing global environment, scenario planning alone is just not enough.

Security planners here say Singapore needs a system to discern patterns in a complex and chaotic environment, something which risk assessment and horizon scanning technologies can help achieve.

Peter Ho, Permanent Secretary, National Security and Intelligence Coordination, said: "It is a tool that will help planners, policymakers, decision makers better think about the future, better plan for the future but it is not going to say, well, tomorrow something is going to happen. I think if we think about RAHS as that kind of system, then I am afraid we are barking up the wrong tree.

"The second point I want to make is RAHS is not intended to replace the man in the loop, the human being, the analyst. It cannot replace human instinct to discern patterns but it can obviously remove tedium of going through masses of information and perhaps can be much more comprehensive in the way it scours massive volumes of information and data that is available to us every day."

For the longer term, it is hoped that agencies in the non-security arena will also come on board to take advantage of risk assessment and horizon scanning to make Singapore an even safer place for everyone. - CNA/ch/ms