About miniSG

What it is

miniSG is a cute 3D model of Singapore that shows what's happening right now: the real sky, weather and haze in each region, traffic on the roads, and things worth going to: events, pop-ups and markets in Discover. You can scrub back through the last 24 hours, or forward through the forecast.

Good to know

• Live data can be a few minutes old. Anything to the right of "now" on the timeline is a forecast, not an observation.
• Near the current time, storms flash as often as NEA's lightning sensors detect strikes nearby (bolts land where ground strikes were detected); at other times lightning follows the thundery forecasts. The flashes themselves, the shapes of clouds and the little cars are illustrations; cloud amounts are model estimates.
• Traffic congestion is refreshed about every half hour; incidents every few minutes.
• Planes: near the current time, the aircraft are real ones picked up by adsb.lol's volunteer receivers, refreshed every few minutes (miniSG shares a daily allowance of updates across all visitors) and flown on smoothly in between; tap one for its callsign, type, altitude and speed (only what it broadcasts). Heights above about 3,000 ft are squeezed so high flights stay in view, and some aircraft (especially on the ground) aren't picked up. Without live data, or away from "now", the flights are illustrative and the note at the top says so.
• Discover listings are picked by hand with help from a weekly Claude routine, and every date, time and price is checked on the organiser's, venue's or official ticketing page (each card says when). Things change: check the official page before you go. "From 8 pm" means no end time is published; a mall-level or area pin isn't the exact shop. Postponed listings are marked as such.
• miniSG isn't a safety service. For haze health advice, check haze.gov.sg; for weather warnings, NEA's official channels.

Where the data comes from

• Weather, haze (PSI, PM2.5), lightning and forecasts: National Environment Agency (NEA) and the Meteorological Service Singapore (MSS), via data.gov.sg (Singapore Open Data Licence).
• Traffic speeds, incidents and expressway signs: LTA DataMall.
• Taxi availability: LTA, via data.gov.sg.
• Discover listings: organisers', venues' and official ticketing pages, linked from each card. Pictures are the official pages' own images, shown with credit and linked from their sites; organisers can ask us to change or remove one.
• Flight data: adsb.lol (ODbL).
• Cloud layers: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0).
• Buildings, building names, roads, MRT lines, water and parks: © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).
• HDB block heights, numbers and years: HDB Property Information (Housing & Development Board), via data.gov.sg (Singapore Open Data Licence); blocks without an address in OpenStreetMap were located with OneMap (Singapore Land Authority).
• Place search: OneMap (Singapore Land Authority) and © OpenStreetMap contributors via Photon by Komoot.
• Planning areas: URA Master Plan 2019, via data.gov.sg.
• Terrain: SRTM elevation data, via AWS Terrain Tiles.

Privacy

miniSG counts visits and how the map is used (for example, which layers people switch on), so it can get better. It does this without cookies and without storing IP addresses or any personal identifier: only daily totals, such as "120 visits from Singapore on mobile" or "40 people opened the haze card". If your browser sends "Do Not Track", nothing is counted.

If you tap the location button, your browser asks before sharing your location. It is used only on your device, to show your bean on the map; it is never sent to miniSG or stored anywhere.

miniSG doesn't use your location, and has no accounts or ads.

Contact

Made by Winston Lau. Questions, corrections, or you run one of the data sources and would like us to change how often we check: email winston.lau@u.nus.edu or message me on LinkedIn.