Dubai: New platform to help reduce traffic, plan public transportation routes

Artificial intelligence (AI) will soon power Dubai’s decisions related to predictive maintenance for roads and bridges, public transportation route planning and crowd management, among others.

This came as the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) launched an ‘Enterprise Platform’ for designing and developing AI and data science solutions. It will help process RTA-owned data and restructure it for training machine learning models across operations.

Applications include analysing traffic data and identifying patterns and forecasts, which contribute to an efficient road network planning and reduces traffic congestion.

Mattar Al Tayer, director-general and chairman of the Board of Executive Directors, RTA, said: “The launch of this platform affirms RTA's commitment to advancing Dubai's transition into the world's smartest city. By leveraging AI, the platform aims to foster residents' wellbeing and boost sustainability and service efficiency.”

He said the RTA has one of the UAE's largest big data platforms in terms of storage capacity. “It has been linked with the AI platform to benefit from the existing historical data and develop use cases that meet RTA’s strategic and operational requirements,” said Al Tayer.

The AI platform serves as a foundation for undertaking a range of projects within the RTA's AI project roadmap. “It covers more than 100 use cases across various domains that cover predictive maintenance for RTA's assets and properties as well as offering AI-integrated smart services to enhance both customer and employee experiences and expedite the processing of administrative tasks.

“The use of predictive maintenance of roads and bridges, public transportation network planning, and crowds’ management are key use cases that mark RTA's direction of incorporating AI technologies in all systems by 2031. It conforms to the UAE's AI strategy and illustrates the importance of data and AI in supporting decision-making and anticipating future requirements.”

The AI platform has the ability to train deep machine learning models. It offers numerous pre-built algorithms for machine learning, thus eliminating the need for source code writing. It also provides a mechanism for comparing algorithm performance in terms of speed and accuracy, allowing the selection of the most suitable one to be used.

It empowers the RTA to develop AI use cases, integrate them into various systems like websites and digital apps, in addition to monitoring machine learning model performance, and implementing a mechanism to interpret AI model decisions. It also ensures that AI models do not make decisions incompatible with the principles and ethics set by the Dubai Digital Authority.

“RTA has trained several Emiratis in leadership, supervisory and technical roles to empower them to analyse data and extract information that supports decision-making, and develops use cases on the RTA's AI platform, which will also boost the reliance on in-house resources in encouraging development across the board,” the authority added.

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