With the Integrated Resorts at Marina Bay and Sentosa slated to open their doors in the next six months, you can expect Singapore's landscape – both physical and economic – to evolve quite drastically.

To prepare for the road ahead (as well as to allay concerns over the potential negative impact of the IRs as their opening day draws near), the authorities have undertaken various initiatives to ensure their operations remain good and clean.

Starting yesterday, a two-day training symposium is being held for officers from the Casino Regulatory Authority (CRA) and Criminal Investigation Department (CID). There, they will learn to tackle and curb organised crime and money laundering from casino industry experts from the United States, Australia and Macau.

"We are very good at the effective regulation of our financial sector. However, the casinos bring with them a whole variety of related problems and pose an operational paradigm challenge even for police officers who are generally used to dealing with people who are law abiding," said Minister for Law and Second Minister for Home Affairs K Shanmugam, during the opening address at the symposium.

Indeed, the unique dynamism and business structure within the casino industry makes it a whole other ball game altogether. To meet these challenges head-on, CRA has also called for the casinos to have regulatory systems in place, such as the mechanical shuffling of cards and the use of bar-coded vouchers instead of tokens for slot-machine wins, amongst other anti-fraud measures.

However, should these prove ineffective, not all is lost. There will always be our trusty Neighbourhood Police Centres (NPC) to fall back on – the newly-opened Marina Bay NPC for the Marina Bay IR, and Bukit Merah West NPC if you're further south in Sentosa.