Saudi Arabia ambitions and context
Under the auspices of Vision 2030, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia aims to expand the number and the level of digital services to citizens, reducing delays and cutting through bureaucracy while also pushing for increased levels of transparency and accountability of government agencies.
One of the key aspirations of the Kingdom is for citizens and operators to have a seamless and consistent experience anywhere in the Country across cities, services, and service providers. The goal is to develop, monitor, and manage multiple smart city services in a standardized and scalable manner.
iot squared joined forces with the Saudi Government to design and develop an end-to-end solution, driving accelerated smart municipal services testing and adoption nationwide.
The Challenges
Since the earliest stages of designing smart services, any local ecosystem poses significant challenges that are exacerbated when escalating the services from a municipal to a national dimension.
In our experience, the challenge was enabling national authorities to accelerate the smart services adoption across the Kingdom in a multi-faceted ecosystem, where cities have different levels of digital maturity, some smart services are launched or under development, and regulations are in a nascent phase, with significant need for standardization, while also engaging citizen in an end-to-end digital experience
The Solution
The solution that iot squared has designed and delivered has horizontal and various vertical components.
The vertical layer includes four smart services that have been selected based on their relevance and impact in the Country. The services are Smart Parking, Smart Lighting, Smart Waste Management, and Smart Micro-mobility (e-scooters, e-bikes, etc.). Those services have been designed and delivered as “turn-key” offerings, i.e., any Saudi Municipality that wants to use one or more of the centrally designed solutions, can simply plug-in into the National Platform and use them on a SaaS approach.
On top of the above, iot squared portfolio of vertical smart services features solutions for crisis management and flood monitoring, supporting an effective and timely response to flooding and other related crises; human-centric smart parks enhance the overall experience of visitors by integrating technology in a way that improves accessibility, safety, and enjoyment as well as environmental sustainability, smart city inspections, enabled by video-analytics and AI, to effectively monitor city-wide phenomena, like visual pollution, improper disposal of waste, etc.
The horizontal layer is the Saudi National Platform for Smart Municipalities that aims at creating a strong foundation for efficient nationwide data management, digital service delivery, business process optimization, and seamless operations, enhancing overall productivity and customer satisfaction.
The platform provides data & analytics services ensuring semantic consistency of diverse national data, with advanced reporting and visualization features through data analytics. Additionally, the platform features a complete set of business and technology services, including payments, contracting, SLA management, and all the enablement services required to manage IoT platforms, devices, etc.
In a nutshell, while Municipalities can adopt any vertical solution of choice (e.g., they can select a specific smart lighting or smart waste management solution), the Saudi National Platform provides them with guidelines and technology enablement to plug their solution(s) of choice into the national sand-box, with significant advantages in terms of services standardization and access across the Country. Citizens, for example, will access smart parking services with an identical user experience, payment interface, etc., in any city in Saudi Arabia.
Benefits achieved
While the solution has been designed with the end customers in mind to improve their quality of life through smarter city services, it also benefits the entire ecosystem orbiting around municipal services.
Smart service providers can expand their market share by plugging into the National Platform for Smart Municipalities, making their services available to all Saudi cities, and benefiting from the platform’s innovations and continuous development.
The Central Government gets access to nationwide understandable and actionable data that will drive decisions and policy-making.
Municipalities, especially medium and small ones, can enhance governance, public service provision, and civic engagementby facilitating access to end-to-end, ready-made smart solutions. They can also optimize the use of public areas and generate revenues from them.
Additional information
Ready to unlock the potential of things? Contact us at info@iotsquared.com.sa to learn more about how our solution can elevate and enhance your operations. We’re here to answer any questions and provide personalized assistance tailored to your specific needs, empowering you to achieve new levels of success.
Article by: iot squared