“Technology has taken us in the shortest amount of time from isolation to interpersonal hyper-connectivity. And now, imagination has allowed us to build a universe in which the very things we have created can have their own inter-object connectivity: the Internet of Things, a reality in which over 13 billion objects are already connected to each other today, and expected to exceed 38 billion by 2020,” begins Ahmad Bin Byat in his speech at the World Government Summit 2016 today.
Bin Byat, the Chairman of du, delves into how the Internet of Things will enable better societal efficiencies today in a breakout session entitled “The Smartest City in the World”, envisioning a Smart future whereby entire cities are connected by the Internet of Things and powered by big data.
The discussion serves as a platform to discuss key benefits of building a city connected by the Internet of Things, with the creation of cutting-edge, global, smart technologies. As part of his address, Bin Byat highlights the recent regional emergency situations and how these challenges could be aided by tech-driven innovations.
Talking about the New Year’s Eve fire, he explains that news now breaks on social media first, “we see how the news started to spread around the world on social media before conventional media [but] the tweets were mainly highlighting fireworks over the fire incidence.” Instead, Bin Byat argues, telecommunications and data companies need to collaborate and harvest the correct data, and thereby manage situations in a smarter way. By collecting the data and using this to manage response effectively, he argues, the public sector reduces the risk for both the public and the emergency response team.
As the cities become Smarter (more agile, more responsive, and more predictive) the impact of the Internet of Things on the public in the UAE will be revolutionary, enabling improved safety, security, business and efficiency in managing city resources such as the emergency services, he says. “Because by gathering, storing, processing and aggregating all the data that we receive, we can apply and implement greater operational efficiencies.”
du has been supporting the Government Summit as Headline partner for three years in support of the Smart City and future vision, which du has a vested interest in turning into reality. Having already built the foundations for Smart City with WiFi UAE and the first Internet of Things network in Middle East (LoRa network), du is ensuring the backbone to the smart city and integration of Internet of Things is available to help the Government to realise this vision. By integrating systems of vendor agnostic and open platforms du believes Dubai can foster unlimited innovation and adoption of all evolving technologies to create a Smart Dubai.
Source: du
