Big data analytics will help to make our smart cities more livable

According to United Nations’ projections, around 70% of the world’s population will live in cities by 2050.Such a rise can be expected to place enormous pressure on city infrastructure worldwide.Big data analytics has a major role to play in alleviating this pressure and helping to make cities better places to live, and as a forward-thinking nation Qatar prides itself on keeping pace with rapid advancements in technology, and using it effectively.Leading the way in turning Doha into a safe and sustainable smart city is the Qatar Smart Programme (Tasmu), a flagship programme of the Ministry of Transport and Communications (MoTC). Designed to accelerate the achievement of all the pillars of Qatar National Vision 2030, Tasmu seeks to revolutionise the way transportation, logistics, healthcare, environment, and sports projects are implemented in Qatar.Tasmu has created an Innovation Lab as a platform for innovative ideas that serve its vision in relation to smart cities.Among the first to apply to become a Tasmu research partner was Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI), part of Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU). QCRI’s application was successful and its Tawasol AI-Enabled Traffic Listener was one of three demonstrations by HBKU at the Tasmu booth at the inaugural Smart City Expo Doha, part of Qatar IT Conference & Exhibition (Qitcom) 2019 where HBKU were silver sponsors.Held under the theme ‘Safe Smart Cities’, Smart City Expo Doha 2019 gathered smart city experts from all around the world to discuss and find solutions for the challenges cities are facing in relation to innovation and new technologies that are advancing the urban future.QCRI’s Dr Sofiane Abbar (senior software engineer), and Noora Alemadi (software engineer), gave a presentation on Tawasol at Qitcom.Tawasol tracks different social media channels to capture relevant feedback related to the public transportation system and events in Qatar, and is one of several ongoing QCRI projects in relation to smart cities.Dr Abbar said: “At QCRI, we have research groups working on urban computing, which is related to the concept of smart cities and helping fast growing cities like Doha cope with the transformation that’s going on.We do this by leveraging big data using machine learning and AI techniques to tackle challenges such as traffic congestion, air pollution, and resilience of cities.For each of these, we have research projects, and we work with local stakeholders, publish papers, and create or develop intellectual property.“Tasmu is leading Qatar’s smart city initiative and we have been collaborating with them on several projects for the last two years. Some are to raise awareness about smart cities and the technological era and we have organised a few workshops with them where we invite experts from around the world who are using AI to tackle problems related to mobility and cities and transportation.”Dr Abbar believes the initial idea of a smart city focused too much on technology and not enough on people, saying: “When people started using the term ‘smart cities’, the real objective was to increase efficiency in terms of energy consumption, air quality, water and so forth.The human dimension was kind of neglected.“This is how we ended up having, for example, dishwashers that are super sophisticated but people not knowing how to use them. Twenty years ago, we had two buttons – on and off – and now you have so many options and features, the appliance is connected to your phone but you don’t know how to operate it.“This way of designing smart solutions has been around for 20 years, but now people are realising that what we want a smart city to do is to make it easier for people to live in.”In keeping with this focus on the human dimension, Dr Yin Yang, an associate professor at the College of Science and Engineering (CSE), gave a presentation at the Tasmu booth about the role of AI in detecting cancer.He showcased a privacy-preserving AI-powered skin lesion diagnosis system that detects potentially life threatening diseases such as melanoma.Meanwhile, CSE’s Dr Mohamed Abdallah (associate professor) and Dr Nourreddine Lasla (research fellow) gave a presentation on a Blockchain-based Efficient Trading Platform for Green Electric Vehicle Charging.The technology enables peer-to-peer energy trading between electrical vehicles owners and renewable energy providers in a transparent way.A smart city can be many things, but to be effective it needs to improve the quality of life for those living in it, and HBKU’s researchers are keen to ensure Doha becomes one of the smartest cities in the world.