‘Smart Cities’ to open up new employment streams

Future cities are expected to host revolutionary solutions for daily life challenges, says a researcher

The German University of Technology in Oman (GUtech) recently hosted a discussion on ‘Smart Cities’ for a group of students from the French School Muscat.

“Generating energy from nature to reduce the CO2 emissions and reducing energy consumption will be important issues for future cities,” said Dr Oualid Ben Ali, Head of the Training and Smart Solutions Centre at GUtech and President of FutureCitiesCouncil.org. He has been researching the topic for many years.

In his talk to the students, he referred to smart cities with zero CO2 emissions like Masdar City in Abu Dhabi.

Dr Oualid suggested that smart cities will offer many opportunities for new jobs that do not exist today and that students should be open and prepared for these challenges.

”Smart or future cities are expected to host revolutionary solutions for daily life challenges, including health, education, logistics, social problems, and transportation. To address these challenges, the so called ‘Internet of Things’ is attracting increasing attention for its promising capabilities to collect, process, and share data about a wide range of objects and events in timely fashion,” said Dr Nafaa Jabeur, Head of the Computer Science Department at GUtech.

Dr Nafaa presented a newly developed smart car based on a mobile app and Arduino hardware.

He also showed to the students how such tools could be used to create simple and efficient customised solutions to control house appliances.

Towards the end of the morning session, the Urban Planning Department of GUtech asked the students to draw their ideas about future cities, which included ideas on introducing solar and water energy, green houses and more public transportation.