Prof. Hamzah: It Is Necessary to Focus on an Innovation-Based Economy Towards Smart Cities

The President of the University of Bahrain (UOB), Prof. Riyad Yousif Hamzah, stressed the need to focus on the innovation-based economy to achieve future growth and smart cities, especially since Bahrain’s 2030 economic vision is based on knowledge, which is the field in which all countries compete today.

Prof. Hamzah addressed the University’s role in refining the skills of graduates and its pioneering role in spreading knowledge and scientific research, especially in the areas of smart cities, which include the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud services, big data, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity, adding that “These are the disciplines that the University is keen to focus on through its academic programs and scientific research.”.

This came during the speech of the President of UOB at the opening ceremony of the fourth edition of the “Bahrain Smart City Summit 2019”, which was held under the patronage of the Minister of Works, Municipalities Affairs and Urban Planning, Eng. Essam bin Abdullah Khalaf, and with the participation of more than 250 participants from experts and specialists in the smart city sector from Inside and outside the Kingdom of Bahrain, on Sunday and Monday (15 and 16 September 2019), as the University President stressed the achievements of the University for the sustainable digital and technical transformation.

Also, Prof. Hamzah pointed out that the University has come a long way in the field of smart cities through many achievements that would contribute to developing and promoting the concept and applications of smart cities, stressing that the University contributes to developing the factors of creativity and innovation among its students, which can be seen in the learning outputs, as students have made a lot of graduation projects on smart city applications in various disciplines.

At the same time, Prof. Hamzah congratulated both the head of the project of establishing a research laboratory for smart and sustainable urbanization, the Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture and Interior Design at the College of Engineering, Dr. Fay Bint Abdullah Al Khalifa, as well as the Assistant Professor in the same department, Dr. Nehal Al-Murbati, for winning the “Smart Urbanization” Award on the project within the University’s participation in the Summit.

Dr. Fay Al Khalifa expressed her extreme pleasure that this project won the “Bahrain Smart City Summit” award, noting that the main idea of it is to carry out a series of research and fruitful cooperation with the concerned sector to explore smart and sustainable design methodologies, materials, and spaces.

Furthermore, she added that the winning idea was for a laboratory that focuses on technological intervention in urban areas to achieve the idea of sustainable habitats, identify the viability of urban life in these areas, monitor change in urban environments, and develop plans to intervene in smart cities to achieve the well-being of society.

The laboratory will be a subsidiary of the Deanship of Postgraduate Studies and Scientific Research at UOB, and it will work on reviewing sustainable strategic plans for regional projects and cities and comparing them with international standards, examining problems within smart cities, providing short-term and long-term solutions to current and future urban challenges, designing smart technologies and manufacturing strategies for smart and sustainable cities and testing them, conducting research, and documenting experiences of sustainable and smart cities.

UOB participated in the Summit with three working papers within discussion sessions, and nearly 14 working papers covering the topics of smart building and construction, waste management and recycling, governance of smart city strategies and sustainable energy uses in smart cities.

Moreover, the Dean of the College of Applied Education, Dr. Mohamed Abdullah Baqer, presented a working paper in which he reviewed the future skills needed to sustain smart cities. While the Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Systems at the College of Information Technology, Dr. Ma’an Mubarak Al-Jawder, discussed the importance of the national framework for smart cities and the workflow therein. In addition, Head of Computer Engineering Department at the College of Information Technology, Dr. Aisha Fouad Bushager, spoke on the pioneering role of UOB in applying the latest Block Chain technologies in the university degree issuance project.

In this context, the Dean of the College of Applied Education Dr. Mohamed Baqer explained that through participating in the Fourth Smart Cities Summit, UOB aims to show the participants the University’s achievements and initiatives at the level of research, studies and scientific applications in the field of smart cities, in addition to informing the participants about how education outputs are prepared, which is in line with the latest developments in smart city technologies, as well as exchanging experiences and updates on everything related to smart city science and its future.