LIVE FROM GSMA MOBILE 360 MIDDLE EAST: The event’s host city of Dubai was hailed as a pioneer in the smart city space during the closing session of Tuesday’s conference which examined the role that internet connectivity can play in building smarter services.
Dilip Rahulan, CEO of UAE-based automation firm Pacific Controls, opened the session with an overview of Dubai’s smart city solutions being deployed at airports, civil defence facilities and road transportation.
One such example involves the expansion work being done at Dubai airport to accommodate the forecast 100 million passengers a year the facility will be handling by 2020. Rahulan said the new connectivity technology being deployed would mean the airport would be able to “transact a passenger through the airport with no human intervention in 15 minutes.”
Pacific Control’s vision, he added, was to make Dubai “the smartest city on earth,” with both the “public and private sectors unified on a single platform.”
Dr Richard Soley (pictured, left), CEO of the Industrial Internet Consortium, was next on stage, remarking that replicating what was happening in Dubai on a global basis would require “an enormous amount of collaboration.”
“The industrial internet is leading the next economic revolution… but there is still a lack of ‘internet thinking’ applied in the industrial sector,” Soley said. He cited research from GE, which calculated that the industrial internet could have a $32.3 trillion impact, representing about 46 per cent of today’s GDP.
The Industrial Internet Consortium was formed to tackle barriers such as security and interoperability, according to Soley. It was founded in March 2014 by AT&T, Cisco, General Electric, IBM, and Intel – with SAP and Schneider Electric recently appointed to its steering committee. It now touts 220 members and 12 test bed facilities.
Comments