JEDDAH: A number of national and international companies have expressed their readiness to provide applications required for making the holy city of Makkah an intelligent city. The move came following a conference on intelligent cities at Umm Al-Qura University.
The conference’s delegates said the implementation of infrastructure projects to develop Makkah into a smart city would start next year, adding that the new electronic applications would serve the millions of pilgrims who visit the holy city every year.
The new intelligent city applications will include those for issuing electronic visas, electronic transport systems, medical services, i n t e r a c t i v e crowd management, smart security systems, interactive geographical information systems, and providing smart Haj cards.
The delegates proposed the formation of a working group under the chairmanship of Makkah Gov. Prince Khaled Al-Faisal to implement a strategic plan for the development of Makkah, applying modern systems.
The committee will identify smart city applications and make proposals on how to finance them.
The high-level panel will make the necessary efforts to remove the obstacles facing the implementation of new infrastructure projects within a time frame. The delegates proposed a similar conference after two years to review the progress of work in this respect.
Makkah Mayor Osama Al-Bar emphasized the municipality’s strategic plan to improve its services. “We want to develop a number of new applications to meet the requirements of an intelligent city,” he said. Expanding the capacity of the holy sites to accommodate the increasing number of pilgrims is one of the major challenges facing the Kingdom’s Haj managers, he added.
Ahmed Yamani, chief technology officer at the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA) said the government has allocated $20 billion from the gross domestic product to build smart cities since 2006. “At present we are focusing on importing technology for the purpose from South Korea and Japan,” Yamani said, adding that the formation of smart cities would boost the Kingdom’s economy.
Mohammed Banten, president of Saudi Post, said a database has been created to facilitate the arrival and departure of pilgrims. The data bank will provide all i n f o r m a t i o n about a pilgrim including his name, age, country, health condition, flight details, and accommodation in Makkah and Madinah. He said the Saudi Post had prepared a map for Makkah to locate various places in the city easily and quickly.
The conference discussed the relevance of Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) to facilitate communication between Makkah’s residential districts.
Microsoft presented technological solutions to make smart homes and smart cities through a variety of environment friendly service systems. The use of RFID system in collecting information about pilgrims was also debated.
