Muttrah is planned to be the first one to move towards being a smart city. One of the oldest town that was prominent for trading because of its natural harbour is also one of the major tourism attractions. The place has been chosen to be the pilot city for the Smart City Platform. Soon expect Muttrah to have smart solutions. The Muttrah Souq already has free Wifi. More facilities will be added, while the place becomes a smart city. The Research Council (TRC) has joined hands with the Supreme Council for Planning (SCP), Muscat Municipality and Information Technology Authority to bring in smart city initiatives to Oman. The soft launch of the Smart City Platform was announced at the Smart City Summit coinciding with Comex-2017 being held at Oman Convention and Exhibition Centre.
The platform is part of the Smart City Strategic Programme that was approved by The Research Council’s board earlier this month. The aim of the platform is to create a knowledge-sharing hub in smart cities, while stimulating smart city research and innovations by providing funds to researchers and organising innovation competitions, according to The Research Council. Dr Ali al Shidhani, Director of Research Centres at TRC, stated that there is a need for coordination and collaboration in the area of smart city concept between the government, industry and academia.
“The objective of the platform is to provide a knowledge-sharing, collaborative and networking environment between smart city stakeholders. The platform shall facilitate and enable smart city innovations through funding research and carry out innovation competitions. The platform shall create awareness on the importance of smart city solutions and best practices and enable a path towards a unified national smart city vision and strategy,” he said. Muttrah is historical, an asset for tourism, yet has challenges and this is what makes Muttrah an ideal candidate as well, according to experts.
Amal al Sabti, Executive Coordinator of Muttrah Rehabilitation Project run by Muscat Municipality and director of the platform, said the city of Muttrah is going to be a pilot city for the platform. “Muttrah enjoys several characteristics, it is a historical, tourism and shopping hub.
Nevertheless, Muttrah suffers several challenges in traffic, parking and lack of tourism services. This makes Muttrah a good candidate for smart solutions such as mobile apps and other digital services to address the challenges,” Amal said.
The Smart City platform is expected to run activities such as seminars, workshops and conferences to build human capacity in this field and to create awareness and accordingly Smart City Summit Oman began along with Comex-2017.
The two-day summit began by looking into how to build a successful smart city as creating a smart city around an existing city is not simple because resources are not optimally designed and ownership may be shared across multiple stakeholders in the public and private sectors. The section considered how to work with the challenges of evolving and modifying the infrastructure. The sessions also outlined the initiatives to enhance smart capabilities in Oman and telecom operators’ role in the vision of smart cities.
Today, the second day of the summit, will focus on smart city and the major role a nation digital vision can play in the economy development. Experts will also be looking into how infrastructure specifically fibre networks will would provide the nervous system that enables cutting edge sensors, services and applications for building smart services. The sessions will also have in depth discussion on Internet of things and will also line out the balance between benefits, costs, time to implement and the potential popularity of key measures.
A Report by Honeywell and Ernst and Young stated that the estimation of implementing smart building solutions could save as much as 30 per cent of water usage, 40 per cent of energy usage and reduce overall building maintenance costs by 10 to 30 per cent.