Meeting needs of a digital city

The UAE's smart monitoring, alert and control systems are being showcased at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo in Dubai.
"This symposium is an extremely insightful key event in the UAE and the region. du is the sponsor and our goal is to position ourselves as the smart ICT provider and solutions partner for both public and private entities," says Jihad Tayara, Vice-President, Business Development and Partnerships, Digital Transformation and Innovation, du, in an interview with Khaleej Times.
Tayara takes care of all commercial ICT engagements. "We are building solutions or POCs (Proof of Concept) for our partners. We are showcasing the Smart Dubai platform, the Dubai Pulse, which is an end-to-end integrated platform that supports infrastructure services, computing, data hosting and storage for the government all the way up to blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI). Real utilisation of data sets is available in the city to empower senior management to take insightful rather than legacy decisions."
The VP adds, "Our participation involves being a strategic technology partner together with Injazat in the Hassantuk technology project, launched by the Ministry of Interior to install devices, sensors and Internet of Things (IoT) capability across more than 150,000 buildings in the UAE. It works in fire prevention and dispatching civil defence personnel to the spot in the event of a fire. The UAE's smart monitoring, alert and control systems are showcased here."
Tayara says that AI in crowd management is built on the Dubai Pulse platform. It is enriched with telecom data and other citywide data that detects anomalies in the city. It uses AI, machine learning or data science to predict people movement.
According to Tayara, Smart City solutions include all IoT - smart parking to smart metering to smart lighting. Several projects have been launched in the city and the biggest is in the Dubai Silicon Oasis, which is the smartest district in the Middle East and du is working on this project. "We have IoT solutions with Dubai Municipality, such as putting sensors in abattoirs to monitor fridge temperature and transportation of meat. We are technology enablers to government departments and companies," he notes.
Tayara explains the trends in technology. Dubai Pulse is the Smart Dubai platform that forms the digital backbone for all government entities. It has a wealth of capabilities such as computing power, storage, dashboards and data science. Smart Identity is one of the enablers of the Dubai Pulse platform and is an identity that recognises the unique user as in Emirates ID.
Blockchain is a secure data base that can be used for any ledger activity such as bookkeeping to restaurant reservation, all the way to cryptocurrency. Tayara says, "This is an extremely secure data base used to store information. Its power depends on how it is used. The Smart Monitoring platform is a general term for many capabilities, to be able to manage and monitor devices, detect anomalies and notify a problem for action to be taken. Also, Dubai has a very ambitious plan to be paperless by 2021." All this and more fall in line with Dubai government's vision to drive global competitiveness. -suchitra@khaleejtimes.com