It is expected according to the experts that the value of Smart Cities industry would reach more than $ 400 billion by 2020, as this industry has become a huge trend being a perfect solution to overcome the water and energy shortages, high pollution, overcrowding, congestion, and all these are some of the challenges of urbanization.
It is estimated that more than 70% of the world’s population will live in urbanized areas by the year 2050, what leads to multiple challenges in resource management and environmental protection.
Hamza Ashour, the marketing, alliances and sales operations director in Smartworld, which is a leader provider of smart digital service in the Middle East, said: “It would be inevitable with the attraction of the world’s population towards urban areas to see higher pollution and shortages of water, energy and overcrowding traffic, and issues such as the capacity to get rid of civil and industrial waste on the long term.”
Also, Ashour said that the “smart cities are the way forward, if we are to ensure a life patterns characterized by comfort, health and connectivity superior to all, rather than suffering the scarcity of resources. There are now important initiatives to make cities more intelligent, by exploiting new technology to reach the goals efficiently. Dubai contained 100 initiatives of planning in the transport, communications and infrastructure, electricity and urban and in the conversion of government services to smart services, which are all indicators of the declaration of this new era.”
Dubai has already achieved a great leap in this regard with the launch of its strategy to shift to the “smart city”. His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates and Ruler of Dubai has launched a “Smart City” project, which will turn 1,000 government services into smart services during the next two years. The current important changes in our way of life are among the options which emerged with Dubai’s progress towards its goal to become the smartest city in the world.
It is expected, according to a United Nations report, that the urbanization which accompanies the growth of the population of the world adds 2.5 billion people to the urban population by 2050, which requires high management efficiency of urban areas around the world.
Experts from all over the world point to the need to overcome the changes in the patterns of life, work and study, as well as to overcome the time and space constraints.
Ashour said: “We, through smart cities, can expect to address these challenges. Smart technologies, for example, cannot ensure optimal utilization of available resources, but it can be with providing new services that are not linked to time and place.”
IHS Technology Inc. expects there would be 88 smart cities at least by year 2025, up from 21 which currently exist, because many countries have announced their initiatives to develop new smart cities, in addition to the conversion of the current smart cities to more smart cities.
India has recently announced its plan to develop 100 smart cities; also the city of Bristol in the United Kingdom announced that it started an experience which is worth several millions of pounds to create the future smart city. Also the government of Japan has selected 13 locations for the start of more environmental friendly cities.
While this provides a tremendous progress toward many opportunities for smart cities, the common goal according to Ashour is to provide smart services at a reasonable cost.
Ashour said: “This will provide great rapid employment developments, especially with regard to technology and service providers, but the common goal is to provide a reasonable cost services to residents and to make cities which are economically efficient and environmentally friendly at the same time”.
Ashour added that by talking about the challenges, you need smart cities to meet the digital security and capacity-building issues, taking into account the cost factor at the same time and the effective exploitation of infrastructure and resources; sustainability is the best basis to reach those goals.
Finally, Ashour said that service providers need to draw their plans and their offerings from now to meet those challenges
