The President of Public Works Authority, Dr. Eng. Saad bin Ahmad Al Muhannadi; President of Qatar University, Dr. Hassan bin Rashid Al Derham; and Executive Director & CEO of QMIC, Dr. Adnan Abu Dayya, during the signing ceremony at Ashghal head office, y
In a bid to provide residents of Qatar more efficient mobility and road safety, the Public Works Authority (Ashghal) yesterday signed a strategic partnership agreement with Qatar Mobility Innovations Center (QMIC).
The agreement was signed in the presence of Ashghal President, Dr. Eng. Saad bin Ahmad Al Muhannadi; President of Qatar University, Dr. Hassan Al Derham; Executive Director & CEO of QMIC, Dr. Adnan Abu Dayya; Chairman of QMIC, Abdulla Zaid Al Talib, and other officials of Ashghal and QMIC.
Through this strategic engagement, Ashghal and QMIC aspire to provide the residents of Qatar with tangible results and benefits related to efficient mobility and road safety, as well as engage key stakeholders in taking strategic steps towards realising Smart City applications and services.
Under the agreement, QMIC will work with Ashghal to provide technical consulting, data analytics, and smart mobility innovations in four important domains.
The first domain is ‘Integrated Traffic and Road Asset Monitoring’.
This track will support Ashghal’s ongoing efforts for road assets management by providing visibility through traffic data, crowd analytics and needed information.
QMIC’s rich traffic data bank and innovative algorithms and mobility analytics tools will provide an efficient overview about the performance of the road network and the positive effect of Ashghal’s achievements in this regard.
Under ‘Connected Vehicles (V2X) Field Pilot & Deployment Plan’ track, QMIC will aid Ashghal in enabling Qatar’s road infrastructure with V2X technologies and applications to get ready for hosting the next generation of intelligent transport systems and road safety.
This will also include carrying out a large scale pilot of V2X system and applications to better understand the performance and assess the value for different use cases.
Furthermore, it will be a landmark achievement for Qatar as the first country to regionally implement this emerging technology that will significantly improve road safety and enable autonomous vehicles.
Under the pact, with the realisation of ‘Smart Highway Testbed for New Innovative Technologies’ track, Ashghal will have a designated corridor in Doha to act as a living testbed for piloting and showcasing emerging ITS and mobility solutions and applications.
This will provide great insight into observing the pros and cons of each emerging technology in a real-life setting before nationwide implementation, and will contribute to better predict the benefits and impacts. QMIC will also work with Ashghal to take ‘Wain’ mobile digital platform to the next phase via introducing new features and enhancing the current capabilities. The Wain platform will increasingly become the main mobile channel for communicating with the public about road conditions and location-based services. Dr. Eng. Saad Ahmed Al Mohannadi said that within the framework of implementing the directives of H E the Prime Minister and Interior Minister to strengthen the partnership between the public and private sectors, the contract had been signed to enhance partnership with QMIC.
“This will help in leveraging the digital assets and expertise that QMIC has built in Qatar over the last few years. This will support Ashghal’s strategy in focusing on smart road asset management and in slowly transitioning from being a technology user to an innovation service provider.”
He stressed that Ashghal had been keen to cooperate with QMIC in order to encourage the local manufactures, especially as it is a Qatari centre with local outputs that support development and innovation.
Dr. Hassan bin Rashid Al Derham highlighted the importance of cooperation between Qatar University and QMIC centre (under QU) with Ashghal to create an advanced innovative solution for the intelligent transport sector, as part of the university’s role in supporting the knowledge economy and human development.
