Smart Dubai to have a marketplace for sharing and exchanging data by 2021

Smart Dubai is building a data marketplace in a bid to monetise data through centralised and decentralised platforms, a top official said.

“We have started the data journey three years ago and have accumulated a lot of city-data. Our target, by 2021, is to have 100% of government data available for sharing and exchanging. Our ambition is to reach 75% compliance in 2019,” Younus Al Nasser, assistant director-general at Smart Dubai and CEO of Smart Dubai Data, the government office charged with facilitating Dubai’s citywide smart transformation, said at the CIOMajlis Annual Conference held in Dubai.

Data is the new oil of the 21st century and Dubai government is playing a key role in deriving value out of the data collected, both private and public, in a bid to become the smartest city on earth.

“To understand the value of data, there is an important question which we need to ask. How much data exist today in the world. How are we transforming this data into value and what are we doing with all the data we have as a city, country, company, government and an individual,” he said.

According to research firm International Data Corporation, 175 zettabytes of data will be created by 2025 from 18 zettabytes in 2018.

So, he said that Smart Dubai’s job is to enable the creation of new forms of value out of the city’s data.

“We are looking at the entire city to drive value out of it. Sometimes, we lead by examples to inspire new realities and on other occasions, we will build an environment for innovation – data governance, city data architecture and infrastructure and ecosystem engagement,” he said.

However, he said that data provides a lot of opportunities and also comes with many challenges.

Selects 14 data-driven use cases

Smart Dubai’s approach has four pillars - value creation (what is the problem that needs to be solved), data governance (balancing innovation potential while protecting privacy and value, and ethical AI implementation), city data architecture and infrastructure, and ecosystem engagement.

He said that technology is just an enabler and Dubai’s AI principles are humanity, equality, ethicality and security.

Smart Dubai has collected 400 data sets on Dubai Pulse platform, provided by more than 35 entities, and has worked on it for three months, looking at what are the opportunities it provides.

Dubai Pulse is the digital backbone powering the Smart City to help spread happiness among all Dubai residents and visitors.

Dubai Pulse has processed 120 data requests in the first three quarters of the year.

 “We shortlisted 16 use cases that can be data-driven. Out of that, we selected 14 use cases. Out of that, we prioritised six of them as an enabler for data science activities,” Al Nasser said.

Emiratisation programme

Furthermore, he said that Smart Dubai has shortlisted the top two – future skills planning engine and smart business location assistant while the other four are energy efficiency optimisation platform, city events management dashboard, patient readmission risk model and interactive visualisation of Dubai’s journey through data.

 “The future skills planning engine became the highest use case for Shaikh Hamdan bin Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of Dubai Executive Council, emiratisation programme.

“We are now working on future skills planning through data. The second use case is all about businesses in Dubai, as Dubai is an economic hub, and how to drive businesses in the city. The idea was to build a smart business location assistant for people, who are planning to open a business in Dubai such as the success rate, where is the best location to start a business,” he said.

The future skills planning engine and smart business location assistant will be launched by the end of the year with the existing data available on Dubai Pulse.

The other use case which can be replicated, he said is the Dubai economic dashboard which gives data in real-time for decision-makers to know about the economic activities in the city.

“The next level that is evolving in Dubai is the decentralisation of data. We are working on it where we can share data among ourselves without centralising it and still derive value from it,” he said.

• Dubai’s ambition is not just to bring advanced technologies and automating tasks
• Machine learning needs human involvement to work effectively
• Regulation and education are biggest barriers to digital transformation

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