With the participation of more than 40 experts from Saudi Arabia and abroad and attended by over 1,000 interested parties and smart service providers, the Minister of Municipal and Rural Affairs, Eng. Abdul Latif Al Sheikh, will today inaugurate the “First Saudi Conference on Smart Cities,” organized by the Ministry with the participation of 40 experts from the Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Belgium, and South Korea, and attended by more than 1,000 interested parties and smart service providers. The conference will continue for three days.
The Ministry explained that this conference is part of the implementation of the initiative “Applying Smart City Concepts in Saudi Cities,” one of the initiatives of the Municipal Transformation Program, which was adopted by the Ministry and approved by the Council of Economic and Development Affairs as a component of the National Transformation Program 2020 in line with the Kingdom’s Ambitious Vision 2030.
The conference program includes six scientific sessions during which 24 working papers and 18 case studies will be presented, in addition to four practical workshops scheduled for the third day of the conference. These workshops will be dedicated to hands-on training and will address four areas: smart urban design, key smart applications, smart lighting for building sustainable cities, and the importance of geospatial data in digital transformation. The conference program also includes two panel discussions to enrich the discussion and help achieve the desired objectives.
The first day of the conference will feature an opening address by His Excellency the Minister of Municipal and Rural Affairs, followed by a speech by Professor “Heng Chi-king” on the vision for smart cities. This will be followed by the first scientific session titled “Smart Urban Planning,” chaired by Dr. Abdulrahman bin Hassan Al-Sheikh, Undersecretary for Urban Planning. During this session, four working papers will be presented addressing the components of smart cities in urban planning, the requirements for the transition to smart cities, smart urban development and a case study of the Songdo Smart City in South Korea, as well as smart urban planning and smart city development (using Yanbu Industrial City as a model).
The second session will be chaired by Engineer Fahd bin Mohammed Al-Jubeir, Secretary of the Eastern Province, and its main topic is ”The Need to Develop National Policies for Smart Cities.” During this session, Mr. “Matthias Redman,” Head of the Smart Cities Projects and Policies Division in Brussels, Belgium, while the second working paper, presented by Dr. ”Patricia,” President and CEO of the World Council on City Data in Canada, will address “Smart Data Governance,” and will present two case studies: the first on ”Electronic Transportation in Dubai,“ presented by Mr. Maher Ahmed, Head of the Planning and Digital Transformation Unit at the Dubai Municipality in the United Arab Emirates, and the second on ”Integrated Systems for Smart Cities in Qatar,” presented by Engineer Faisal Al-Kuwari, Chief Technology Officer at Meeza in Qatar.
