UAEs Smart City Initiatives exemplary for economies worldwide

Saeed Al Dhaheri: Internet of Things crucial for success of smart cities
Smartworld participates in ‘Power to the Cloud’ conference

Mobilk - Driven by the guidance of its visionary leadership, the UAEs innovative and comprehensive measures toward Smart Sustainable Cities are an example for other countries to emulate, a senior IT expert has said. 

Saeed Al Dhaheri, Chairman, Smartworld, said: “Our leadership has set goals which include our people. The unique approach adopted by the UAE in its initiatives makes it a real global leader.”

Smartworld, a joint venture between Etisalat and Dubai South, participated in ‘Power to the CLOUD’ conference at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre. 

During his address, Dhaheri said Dubai, Abu Dhabi and other emirates are implementing effective strategies to lead the transformation toward smart cities. 

“Dubai has a unique approach, of not only focusing on becoming the smartest city on the Earth by 2017, it also aims to be the world’s happiest place, which makes the initiatives inclusive and these have been widely recognized world over. Derived from Dubai Plan 2021, the measures will lead Dubai to be a city of creative and happy, empowered people, be an inclusive and cohesive society, a competitive knowledge economy, under a pioneering excellent government. Abu Dhabi has also launched the Digital Transformation initiative,” added Dhaheri.

There are already a lot of achievements we can be proud of, he said, while citing the examples of Smart Dubai Index and Dubai Smartpreneur competition launched by the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry in cooperation with the Smart Dubai office. 

The Smart City Index is a pioneering approach to Smart City KPIs and will become a global roadmap for smart cities, providing a clear path to transformation that is founded in best practice from Dubai and our international peers.

“These are unique initiatives on a global level. There is no single benchmark to assess the smartness of a city or the initiatives. The Smart Dubai Index has, a universally applicable set of indicators which will highlight the achievements of Smart Dubai, as the city prepares to welcome the 50 million visitors to Dubai by 2020, has very well set an example,” added Dhaheri.

He said that as a city moves toward bringing intelligence in myriad number of areas, it faces challenges such as deploying skilled and qualified resources to convert the data into actionable insights. 

Citing Garter research, Dhaheri said there are 1.6 billion IoT devices in SC projects and will reach 21 billion by 2020.

“With an exponential rise in the quantum of data that is generated, the real benefit from managing Internet of Things (IoT) data can accrue when we have smart qualified people to run the initiatives. This makes it highly important to take data and convert into actionable insight. IoT is crucial for success of smart cities and it can optimize smart city operations.”