Dubai’s smart city goal creeps closer

Dubai
wants to be a world-leader in building smart
cities and it’s attracting corporate players from around the world
clamouring to be involved in the futuristic project.

Wamda met with Rabih
Dabboussi, managing director of CISCO
UAE to talk about how Dubai’s smart
city strategy, launched last year, should work and
the role the various players can have.

Dabboussi,
44, is the driving force behind Cisco’s Smart City strategy in the
UAE and in the Middle East. A father of three and avid

cyclist, Dabboussi joined Cisco in 2006 as
an engineer in 2006 and moved his family to Dubai in 2008 to lead
the company’s engineering section for emerging markets.

Rabih Dabboussi. (Image via Rabih Dabbousi)

Today, as the head of Cisco’s Middle East
operations, the Lebanese-American is leveraging his experience in
mobile phone technology in the US to focus on building connected
communities in the Gulf.

If a smart city requires a vision, it also
requires planners and tech suppliers to build it.

Cisco has form in smart city development around
the world. Its
Smart+Connected Communities programs
are implemented in 90 projects worldwide. These the company
says on its website, can help those in charge “address
problems using intelligent networking capabilities”, which provide
the information and services smart cities need in order to truly
earn the name.

The company is working with the Dubai Design
District to roll out its smart city tech within the creative
entity’s greenfield pilot project. It’s also done a deal with
Dubai’s Department of Economic Development to provide physical
round the clock government service points allowing residents to
register businesses or licenses online, the first of which will be
in Dubai Mall.

Dubai Design District (d3). (Image via TECOM
Investments)

Wamda: Why are you such a strong believer in
Dubai becoming a smart city?

Rabih Dabboussi: The first
reason is because Dubai has a proven track record of setting a
vision, going in the direction and achieving it.

The second thing is because part of my job is
to
engage closely with lot of government
officials and leaders and I see their thought process, their
planning… It gives me a tremendous amount of trust and comfort
(to know) that these people know exactly what they are doing, where
they are and what they need to get where they want.

The question is how we’re going to accelerate
the execution of this vision and achieve the goals in the quickest,
most efficient and lowest cost (way) for the city.

Wamda: If we look at what has been done in
Dubai so far, do you think the city is on the right
track?

Dabboussi: (They have made) a
good start because it’s a journey not a project. You don’t start a
smart city project and say you’re done three years later. It’s only
the beginning, the baby steps of turning the city into the smartest
city in the world is going to be in this three year period and
those baby steps toward a smart city will deliver thousands
of use
cases* with a tremendous value.

The nice thing about building a smart city is
that the government doesn’t have to do everything by itself. They
just have to set the vision and the initiative, build the platform
and open it – still regulated with the right laws – for global
innovation to come and contribute.

There is no reason why a great app developer who
lives in Poland won’t be able to access the APIs of traffic and
demographics to build the next Uber for the UAE.

* A ‘use case’ is an engineering term for a list
of actions or steps that define the interactions between an actor
and a system, to achieve a goal.

Wamda: What should Dubai provide to help build a smart
city?

Dabboussi: When you think
of (smart city) infrastructure, the most basic element is
connectivity.

In the past, we had our computers and laptops
connected to the internet and now we have so much more, our
eyeglasses, our wearables, our shoes, our watches… the sensors that
are (used) in ocean monitoring and measuring the amount of oil
pumped from the sea beds.

All of these now enhance the experience of a
smart city and give us the platform to be able to take decisions
quicker, more efficiently and in the more meaningful way. I believe
that in the future our kids will laugh at us and they will say our
parents and grandparents use to have something called hotspots,
while their children will say what is a hotspot?

Wamda: Is there a role for entrepreneurs in
building Dubai’s smart city?

Dabboussi: There is a
tremendous opportunity for entrepreneurs to come up with new
solutions.

Initially, we will import ideas, technologies
and solutions but that’s not sustainable over the long-term because
innovation must be here.

We have to build things for Dubai, in Dubai; we
have to build things for the UAE, in the UAE. We’re starting to see
startups established here, or start to open offices because they
want to understand the vision and how it maps to their innovation
engine and strategies. We will get there and will have more focus
on research and development and more innovation based
here.

Wamda: Do you have any advice then for those
entrepreneurs?

Dabboussi: Look at the niches,
the key strengths that you have and try to align them to the top
priorities of the government leaders in whatever vertical you look
at. I have no doubt there are opportunities for
everybody.