Qatar Country Senior Partner, PwC Middle East Bassam Hajhamad (left) and CEO of The Metaverse Institute in London Dr. Christina Yan Zhang.
Doha, Qatar: Smart Expo City Doha 2023 witnessed an array of sessions, unfolding new insights into creating thriving, next-generation cities and communities by harnessing emerging technology and the power of data.
The event attracted high-profile personalities across the region and more than 4,500 individuals took part in-person at the Culture Zone’s Congress Center at Al Bidda Park, where Expo Doha 2023 is currently being hosted.
Assistant Undersecretary of Digital Industry Affairs at the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) H E Reem Mohammed Al Mansoori, stated: “Through the success of this event, Qatar has firmly staked its claim to be a regional force in the global dialogue on the fostering of smart cities and sustainable urban initiatives.”
She further commented: “The inspirational insights offered by experts from diverse disciplines and cultures will play a pivotal role in achieving the Qatar National Vision 2030 goals.”
“These perspectives are set to ignite positive changes across a spectrum of economic and social sectors and have the potential to share transformative policies for the future.”
“Congress outcomes include the start of partnerships which are likely to result in pioneering and innovative approaches to the way we do business, work, learn and live in what promises to be an exciting and more sustainable and connected data-driven future,” Al Mansoori added.
Speaking to The Peninsula on the sidelines of the event, Bassam Hajhamad, Qatar Country Senior Partner, PwC Middle East said: “Today, we are seeing how technology and data are revolutionising our cities. This evolution towards ‘cognitive cities’ – urban centres enhanced by data and smart technology – is a significant change in how we think about and build our urban spaces. These cities are not just more efficient; they are designed to respond better to the needs of their residents, making urban living more adaptable and connected.”
Bassam Hajhammad highlighted that this movement towards Smart Cities and embracing digital transformation is crucial for Qatar’s economic growth. It’s expected to boost the nation’s GDP, create more jobs, and lead to communities that are not only technologically advanced but also socially enriched and more cohesive.
The occasion also witnessed over 40 organisations presenting smart solutions on the Digital Enablement Platform. The discussions were also focused on citizen-centric data governance to shape a progressive e-government landscape.
Experts underlined the vitality of cultural intelligence for inclusive and sustainable transformations in cognitive cities.
However, the overall objective of the sessions was to advance e-governance and urban intelligence for the future.
CEO of The Metaverse Institute in London Dr. Christina Yan Zhang, called for a new approach to public-private-people-planet partnership to foster an inclusive, participatory, and sustainable people-centric digital future during the Smart City Expo Doha conference.
As the newly appointed Co-Chairman of the United Nations International Telecommunications Union’s (ITU) Task Group on Pre-standardization for the CitiVerse, Dr. Zhang is leading a groundbreaking UN initiative to engage 193 member states in developing a comprehensive definition and roadmap for utilising cutting-edge technologies to establish citizen-centered future cities, paving the way for international standards.
Recognising the emphasis on human development in Qatar Vision 2030, Dr. Zhang said: “This is my first visit to Qatar, and I have been impressed by the country’s notable progress over the years. Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser has been an influential role model for women internationally. I am privileged to witness the transformative effects of visionary leadership in this nation of 2.8 million people, which has emerged as the world’s second-richest country in terms of GDP per capita.”
“We are committed to working with Qatar to advance the innovative public-private-people-planet partnerships under the UN’s CitiVerse project and leverage technological advancements to establish a people-centered digital future that benefits all people,” Dr. Zhang remarked.
The Peninsula, one of the leading English dailies in Qatar, was launched in 1996. In the past 25 years, The Peninsula has been successfully providing our readers extensive news coverage from around the world with a primary focus on life in Qatar.
With over 65 million pageviews in 2020, thepeninsula.qa (thepeninsulaqatar.com), we can proudly say, is the top news website – in both English and Arabic – in Qatar.
Last year they had over 8.5 million users visit our website and good majority of the visitors are from Qatar, making them a very hyper local website.
Jointly held with NVIDIA and Dell, the Women in Smart Spaces panel discussion aims to foster an “authentic gender balance” across all city operations around the world.
SmartCitiesWorld is joining with technology companies NVIDIA and Dell to host the Women in Smart Spaces panel discussion at Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona on Wednesday, 8 November from 9:30 to 10:30am.
The organisers have handpicked a number of top women attending the Expo to tell the story of their journey in the smart city space. Sandra Baer, SmartCitiesWorld ambassador and CEO of Personal Cities, will chair the discussion and explains that the intention is to help foster “authentic gender balance” across all city operations, around the globe.
She adds: “We see it in the real world – an equitable balance of women in smart spaces allows all of us to ‘understand’ the challenges and solutions for cities in an all-encompassing light.”
Top women panellists
The line-up of panellists includes: Eva Labarta, head of public sector, Amazon Web Services (AWS); Christina Yan Zhang, CEO of The Metaverse Institute; Jennifer Sanders, co-founder and executive director, North Texas Innovation Alliance; Pooja Venkatesh, senior product manager, Smart Cow; Maria Galindo Garcia-Delgado, board member of Climate Neutral and Smart Cities Mission for the European Commission; Ekaterina Sirazitdinova, senior deep learning data scientist, NVIDIA.
Panellists will talk about their own smart city experience and discuss some of the barriers they’ve faced as well as their successes. They will also provide advice and recommendations to women everywhere on how they can secure the power, position – and pay – to build a more gender-balanced and equitable smart city space.
“There remains a real need to create more awareness of the challenges women continue to face in sectors such as tech, engineering, science, finance and more,” says Carlota Da Veiga Pestana, chief commercial officer, SmartCitiesWorld.
“If we are to build successful smart and sustainable cities, we need the diversity of thinking, actions, insight and vision that women can bring. We want to inspire women of all ages to make their mark in the smart city space and are delighted to jointly host this panel discussion.”
“We see it in the real world – an equitable balance of women in smart spaces allows all of us to ‘understand’ the challenges and solutions for cities in an all-encompassing light”
Charbel Aoun, director of Smart Spaces and Cities at NVIDIA will kick off the event at 9.30am at the Dell Booth, located in Hall P1, Level 0, Street C, Stand 10, before handing over to Sandra Baer to moderate the conversation.
Smart City Expo World Congress runs 7-9 November at Fira De Barcelona. The SmartCitiesWorld team will be there in force and is hosting a number of events, roundtables, workshops and drinks receptions. We will also be reporting live from the event so if you are launching a new product or service, or announcing any smart city developments, email us at press@smartcitiesworld.net.
SmartCitiesWorld provides a quality, comprehensive and current global content resource for urban leaders and their partners.
Through our platform, we encourage the smart city ecosystem to share their experiences and learn from each other.
SmartCitiesWorld enables connections between smart city challenges, solutions, industry peers, suppliers, and partners at your desk on the move and at our events.
Dr. Christina Yan Zhang, CEO and founder of The Metaverse Institute in the UK, speaks during a session at FESCIOF. (AN photo)
Expert praises Kingdom’s use of metaverse in presenting smart cities
“When you have this strong digital platform, everyone will participate,” Culture Ministry official says
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia has been praised for its use of digital technology to present smart city developments to prospective investors.
Speaking on Wednesday at the Future of Education, Science and Culture International Organizations Forum (FESCIOF), CEO and founder of The Metaverse Institute in the UK, Dr. Christina Yan Zhang said the Kingdom was embracing the technology.
“In Saudi Arabia, we have many amazing smart city projects, where we use digital today in the metaverse environments to simulate the whole city,” she said.
“Even before the city is constructed, all citizens who are planning to move to a city, either here in Saudi Arabia or from other parts of the world, they can see how the city is going to look like, either as public transport or housing or health care or as fiction.”
She said that the metaverse brought together a range of new technologies to create an intuitive, immersive and interactive interface that was very user-friendly.
“We are seeing the hallmark of this icon system through things like artificial intelligence, 5G connections, cybersecurity and different user interfaces like VR, AR, XR,” Zhang said.
Jasir Alherbish, CEO of the Heritage Commission at the Saudi Ministry of Culture, said: “When you have this strong digital platform, everyone will participate. These technological advancements help us manage our sciences.”
Lawrence Eta, vice president of digital analytics at the Royal Commission of AlUla, said the point of the conference was to discuss the future of education and sciences, and the need for digital literacy.
He said in AlUla the RCU was working closely with telecommunications providers to develop the infrastructure needed to be able to present the region and its culture to the outside world.
“AlUla is the size of Belgium, so the first thing we have to have is internet penetration.”
He added that digital connectivity allowed telecommunications to bring value to the world.
“For example, let us take a look at autonomous pods. It is less about the autonomous cars and more about the digital economy that’s being created, because now we have local people in AlUla that are actually powering those ports.”
Arab News, Saudi Arabia’s first English language daily newspaper was founded in 1975 and has become the Middle East’s leading English daily. It is one of 30+ brands by Saudi Research and Media Group (SRMG). From 2016 with the joining of Faisal J. Abbas as the Editor-in-Chief, Arab News has gone through major digital transformation and a complete rebranding to become popular not only among Saudi Arabia’s society and the Arab World, but also reaching policy makers and business leaders in the United States and the United Kingdom making it one of the primary sources in the Arab World to be quoted by US and UK media outlets and policy makers. Because of its wide readership profile with over 10 million website monthly readers, it is a much sought-after medium for advertising and brand building. It is a pioneer and has developed unique content, shows and programs becoming the first, what was once a traditional newspaper, to produce video talk shows and radio shows, including: Frankly Speaking video show hosted by Katie Jensen, digs deep into the insights of some of the most important policy makers and business leaders in the Middle East and Worldwide. The Mayman Show is a personable podcast by Arab News hosted by reporter Hussam Al-Mayman. The show revolves around personal and relatable conversations between the host and his celebrity guests that include actors, comedians, models, athletes and more.
