UAE plans more investment on smart infrastructure

ABU DHABI // The UAE plans to invest more on smart infrastructure in the near future to improve the lives of residents across the country, according to officials from Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

From smart traffic systems, oil field technologies and energy grids, the world is becoming more instrumented, interconnected and intelligent. And the UAE is following suit.

“If we didn’t have smart infrastructure like Salik, there would tens of thousands of cars,” said Ebrahim Al Alkeem, governance security lead at the Abu Dhabi Systems and Information Centre (Adsic). “This allows the flow of traffic without human interaction. In the future, we will have smaller hospitals, for example, to be able to do check-ups in one day but we will need more network, surveillance and monitoring systems to secure this data.”

Dubai’s target is to complete 100 smart initiatives and 1,000 smart services by the end of the year. Although an undisclosed number have already been set up, new services are expected for the emirate’s residents this year.

“It’s a very important milestone for us and we are working now on a big initiative with the Roads and Transport Authority in terms of having a command centre,” said Matar Al Humairi, assistant chief executive of smart infrastructure at Dubai Smart Government. “This will monitor all the mobility in Dubai, the traffic and transportation, we will have a full city view.”

The new initiative, currently under construction, is expected to complete by 2018. “This will really impact the people’s quality of life,” he said. “This will help monitor the traffic flow. We have a control systems for the metro and transport [now] but we expect to see a consolidated command and control system because now it’s separate based on the domain.”