For those who do not know, the Civil Service Exchange Programme (CSEP) is an initiative for the Singapore and Thailand government to exchange ideas on various national issues. Recently, both nations have concluded the 10th edition of this meeting with plans to tackle demographic challenges. You may wish to refer to this article for more information.

Indeed Singapore is experiencing graying population and it is important to ensure that we have all the necessary plans in place to cope with the challenges that a graying population may pose. Besides the economic challenges, elderly care infrastructure to cope with possible social issues would be just as important.

Reflecting on this "Long Term Care for the Elderly" inter-ministry project launched yesterday, TeamOneMap believes in the importance of location that can come to play a crucial role in the execution of this project. Our focus today would be to suggest the use of maps to assist in planning of physical infrastructures in relation to the demographic studies that would be conducted.

In OneMap, there is a theme layer showing the locations of elder care services.

Under the Theme icons, navigate to Family and Community and then to Eldercare Services.

From this map, we can see the number of eldercare services for each region. For planning purposes, a mash-up of the elderly population can be done and analysis of the sufficiency of such care centres can be determined. Of course, we do not have the demographics data in OneMap but it would be a good suggestion to use visual aids to justify the planning of facilities!