Smart City Expo World Congress Barcelona 2024

Saudi Arabia has been pushing for smart city and AI development within the country, investing heavily in smart technology and AI with funds like the Project Transcendence, with a $100 billion investment to boost AI, data analytics and smart tech in the country.
Or the Corporate Investment Fund supporting startups in cybersecurity, AI, IoT or blockchain.
We saw the country's interest in the industry at the SCEWC in Barcelona, with many Saudi booths like those of the Saudi Data and AI authority or the Al-Madinah region.
During the event, we spoke with Roshn, the country's main developer, who specializes also in greenfield projects, to discuss what smart city solutions are key in Saudi Arabia and the country's role in the industry.
So mobility, for example, is one major or smart mobility is one major item that we touch points on.
And we take care of this from early design stages.
So what we do is we include what we call mobility hubs within our communities where e-scooters, e-bikes, delivery robots and EV chargers sit, in a way to reduce, traffic between industries of our neighborhoods and reduce, of course, noise and fuel consumption overall.
So there are three, initiatives I might mention in this realm.
Having smart streetlighting that saves energy.
Having an irrigation system automated in a way and connected to a weather station to detect rain and weather conditions to better save on water.
Beside having waste management solution provided to our customers through the super app that we have.
So one part of this application is having the ability to scan any piece of waste that, anybody is willing to dispose, and it tells them exactly to where it should go.
So sometimes people is not, very much aware of, recycling and, the multiple bins and what they represent.
So this application basically helps them, in achieving that in a better, easy way.
So we try to be smart from the design stage towards construction stage sales and postsales and handover towards operation and maintenance.
So what we do at Roshn is consider a digital asset for each of our units across the project lifecycle.
And post that towards sales and handover and even, towards operation and maintenance.
This will improve our customer experience, when it comes to dealing with operation and maintenance.
And for us, to better have community management capabilities.
There are major players in the realm of smart cities, IoT, in Saudi Arabia, we have a great institutes like, SDAIA and Tahakom, who are leaders in this domain and IoT and AI in general.
Definitely, we are a consumer of these products, but, producer as well.
And we have technologies that you might have seen here at this expo, that showcases the capabilities.