​The Public Works Authority ‘Ashghal’ signed today, 13 October 2019, a strategic partnership agreement related to Smart Mobility Innovations, with Qatar Mobility Innovations Center (QMIC). This is in the presence of H.E. Dr. Eng. Saad bin Ahmad Al Muhannadi, President of the Public Works Authority, Dr. Hassan Al-Derham, President of Qatar University, Dr. Adnan Abu-Dayya, Executive Director & CEO of QMIC, Mr. Abdulla Zaid Al-Talib, chairman of QMIC, and many leaders from Ashghal and QMIC.

On this occasion, H.E. Dr. Eng. Saad Ahmed Al Mohannadi, President of Ashghal, noted that within the framework of implementing the directives of His Excellency the Prime Minister to strengthen the partnership between the public and private sectors, this contract has 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 added that this strategic partnership culminated many months of discussions between Ashghal and QMIC to identify specific Ashghal projects and strategies that can benefit from QMIC’s broad portfolio of smart solutions and data intelligence.

He stressed that Ashghal has 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.

For his part, Dr. Hassan bin Rashid Al Derham, President of Qatar University and a Board Member at QMIC, 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.

He said: “At the University, as we feel that we are responsible for building local potentials to achieve a smart economy through the implementation of many initiatives, enhancing our collaboration with Ashghal to support them in implementing a world-class infrastructure projects.
QMIC is located at the Qatar Science and Technology Park as it strengthens collaboration with national partners and decision makers to create an innovative environment that is particularly focused on the local market in Qatar.

Dr. Adnan Abu-Dayya, Executive Director & CEO of QMIC, commented: “Given its leading role in implementing intelligent transport systems and in managing the extensive road infrastructure in Qatar, we are extremely pleased to partner with Ashghal to fully utilize QMIC’s unique expertise in smart cities and intelligent mobility to help realize the ambitious operational and strategic plans of Ashghal. Further, this partnership is an important milestone in QMIC’s strategy of using local innovations to support mega projects and create local technology industry in support of Qatar’ strategy. This partnership also demonstrates the progress made in Qatar in transitioning local knowledge and innovations into market value and impact”.

Through this strategic and timely 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 realizing Smart City applications and services.

Under these agreements, QMIC will work with Ashghal to provide technical consulting, data analytics, and smart mobility innovations in four important domains, including:

1. Integrated Traffic and Road Asset Monitoring

Support Ashghal’s ongoing efforts for road assets management by providing visbility 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 achievemtns in this regard.

2. Connected Vehicles (V2X)  Field Pilot & Deployment Plan

Under this 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 including 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.

3. Smart Highway Testbed for New Innovative Technologies

With the realization of this 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 provides 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.

4. Wain Mobile Platform and Enablers

QMIC will 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.

About QMIC

It is worth mentioning that The Qatar Mobility Innovations Center (QMIC) is the first independent innovations center in the region with a focus on developing and deploying smart mobility systems and services. QMIC’s main goal is to use locally engineered innovations and knowledge to create technology-based industries that address regional challenges and grow with mega projects in Qatar and the region. Since 2009, and through its focus, on distributed sensing, data collection & management, services creation and delivery, QMIC is becoming a national leader in the area of Internet of Things (IoT). In particular, QMIC has been leading in delivering IoT platforms, and IoT solutions and services in vertical domains including Intelligent Transport, Logistics & Telematics, Road Safety and Environment. Through its offices at the Qatar Science and Technology Park (QSTP), QMIC is working closely with key national partners and stakeholders to realize a market-focused innovations ecosystem in Qatar.