By Dr. Nawaf I. Almoosa

Cities become ‘smart’ only when they offer services that properly take into account the needs of their population and of visitors. City services have to be context-dependent and support the achievement of city-specific goals.

During the third session of the INNOV-Italy UAE Webinar Series, I participated in a webinar that highlighted multi-disciplinary smart city solutions that blend together the socio-cultural and technical aspects of iconic cities like Rome, Milan, Dubai and Abu Dhabi. I was joined by Italian and UAE academia, industries and public institutions to discuss new collaborations as well as novel ideas for new projects.

In one of the sessions, Dr. Steve Griffiths, Senior Vice President for Research and Development at KU, and I covered our perspectives on research and innovation that can support the development and evolution of smart cities and sustainable mobility.

New technologies are enabling cities to become ‘smart.’ ‘Smart cities’ is a concept that has evolved very quickly thanks to the recent advancements in sensors and artificial intelligence technologies that enable analysis of massive data sets. There is no shortage of start-up companies trying to address every sector of smart cities. As Dr. Steve said, on the technology side, clearly there’s a good opportunity for the Internet of Things, high speed communications networks, low-earth orbit satellites providing data and lots of other ways of bringing data to intelligent systems. But a smart city is not just a collection of technologies.

In fact, the notion of a city itself is not always so clear. City definitions differ: in Japan, a city needs 50,000 inhabitants; in Norway, just 200. But cities are very important, no matter how they are defined. 55 percent of the world’s population lives in cities—4.2 billion people—and 80 percent of global GDP is generated in cities. They account for three-quarters of human-caused global carbon dioxide emissions and an estimated two-thirds of global final energy use.

In the UAE’s definition of the smart city, we include the notion of sustainability, which is perhaps the most critical aspect of intelligence. We look at the environment, we look at the economy, and we look at social welfare, bringing numerous opportunities to have impact across a lot of different areas. Healthcare, safety, convenience, environmental quality and social connectedness all factor into the UAE’s vision for smart and sustainable cities.

Additionally, the Khalifa University R&D strategy focuses on all the tenets of the 4th Industrial Revolution, including information and communication technologies, robotics, artificial intelligence and data science, and advanced materials and manufacturing. Like a city, our strategy involves integrating all the different sectors aligned with UAE priorities. The Emirates ICT Innovation Center (EBTIC), of which I am the Acting Director, is one of the key collaborators along with Khalifa University’s other research centers focused on smart and sustainable cities in the UAE. 

EBTIC is built on open innovation and collaboration between academia, industry and government. We function like any academic research center in terms of our research and putting out scientific publications, but we also work closely with government and industry stakeholders in applied research, where we produce different concepts and other value-driven research.

Smart societies, infrastructure and enterprise form the backbone of EBTIC’s research and innovation architecture. Our research teams aim to apply tools from ICT, operations research, data science and artificial intelligence to solve problems in telecommunications infrastructure and to optimize operational efficiency for enterprises. We also use these tools to solve problems in society in general, specifically in areas of sustainability, education, healthcare and social networking.

Academia is crucial in developing a smart city—another aspect of a smart city is having a strong educational system. We have outreach programs to educate professionals in data science and the impact of the technology at a high level and how it can be used in organizations and society in general. Since 2015, we have trained more than 250 professionals in the UAE, with Prof. Ernesto Damiani, Senior Director of the Khalifa University Robotics and Intelligent Systems Institute, leading that effort.

The UAE is at the forefront of important work in smart cities, with the smart and sustainable cities of the future the path forwards for smart and sustainable growth.

Innov-Italy UAE aims at improving the opportunities for bilateral cooperation between the UAE and Italy in six high-innovation sectors, including cybersecurity, space, smart cities and sustainable mobility, life sciences, food technologies, and renewable energy.

Dr. Nawaf I. Almoosa is Acting Director of the Emirates ICT Innovation Center (EBTIC) at Khalifa University.

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By Dr. Sean Swei

The UAE and Italian scientific communities have both experienced unprecedented success in space exploration and earth observation in recent years, systematically promoting space technology through incremental research and development and radical innovation.

The second in a series of webinars aiming to strengthen the opportunities for bilateral cooperation between Italy and the United Arab Emirates saw speakers discuss novel ideas and collaboration topics in technology development to support international space missions in different domains. Khalifa University recently launched the KU Space Technology and Innovation Lab (KUSTIL), in June 2020, of which I am the Director.

I joined this webinar to discuss the areas of research KUSTIL is focusing on.

One such area is space robotics, investigated by Prof. Lakmal Seneviratne and Prof. Jorge Dias from the KU Center for Autonomous Robotics Systems (KUCARS). The recent growth in low cost unmanned systems provides opportunities for new and cost-effective unmanned rovers for space exploration and space observations. This allows the continuous monitoring of assets deployed in space and to other planets via autonomous vehicles operating cooperatively to provide flexible and persistent surveillance solutions. Researchers in this area are looking at dealing with communications delays for remotely controlled rovers. Robots in space are a long way from teams on Earth, resulting in a delay in communications between them and so solutions that balance autonomy with long-distance command and control are required to conduct scouting missions on distant planets.

Another area is Next Generation Antenna (NGA) systems, investigated by Dr. Mohammed Abou-Khousa, Dr. Prashanth Marpu, and Dr. Khaled Al-Wahedi at KU. With the advent of small and nano satellites, deep space vehicles, and high speed networks, there is an increasing demand for low-volume and lightweight antennas that can function optimally under harsh space conditions, wherever the mission may take them. In this project, new antenna systems founded on novel design concepts will be developed to address these needs. Specifically, 3D metal printing and machine learning algorithms will be used to realize new optimized antennas.

We are also considering sustainable astronomy in the era of large satellite constellations. Low-orbit broadband satellite constellations are growing dramatically, and due to their relative proximity to Earth, they appear extremely bright, posing a serious threat to observational astronomy. Dr. Elena Fantino is leading a team of researchers to develop an automated system to accurately predict satellite transits across the field of view from Earth and then developed scheduling solutions that mitigate the negative impact on observations. Astronomers foresee a swarm of 40,000 low-Earth orbit satellites in the near future, and unless successful mitigation actions are adopted, the scientific capabilities of current and future observatories will be severely compromised.

Finally, Dr. Yahya Zweiri and Dr. Jorge Dias join me in proposing work on robotic in-space assembly of large space structures. In order to support long-term human presence in the solar system, large flexible space infrastructure needs to provide basic operational and functional needs in space, such as communication antennas, observatories, and solar power stations. Materials made of a large number of physical components but with a small number of distinctive part types can offer highly repetitive patterns in size, dimension, and shape that make them viable solutions for autonomous robotic in-space assembly. Our project will demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of building an ultra-large space infrastructure through collaborative robotic in-space assembly techniques. This research will have significant impact on future human expansion on the Moon, Mars and beyond.

At Khalifa University, we’re proud to showcase our faculty expertise, especially in space exploration and Earth observation.

Innov-Italy UAE aims at improving the opportunities for bilateral cooperation between the UAE and Italy in six high-innovation sectors, including cybersecurity, space, smart cities and sustainable mobility, life sciences, food technologies, and renewable energy.

Dr. Sean Swei is a Professor of Practice in Aerospace Engineering and Director of the KU Space Technology and Innovation Lab at Khalifa University.

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By Dr. Ernesto Damiani

The area of cybersecurity has expanded in scope, relevance and impact in our increasingly ICT-based society. In the first of six webinars aiming to strengthen the opportunities for bilateral cooperation between Italy and the United Arab Emirates, I was joined by experts to identify Cybersecurity gaps and opportunities that emerge with the continuing progress of IT developments like Artificial Intelligence.

As Noah Radford, Chief of Global Affairs for the Dubai Future Foundation, explained, it’s no secret that the UAE has experienced meteoric growth over the last 20 years, as the country has become a world leader in a variety of sectors, and as any complex system grows, so too does the number of challenges it must overcome. As we look towards the next 20 years, we must ask ourselves how we will tackle the questions that arise in a way which helps to benefit not just the UAE, but the region, and the world.

The future is certain to bring about a new paradigm in cybersecurity, driven by the fear of the damages that cybersecurity attacks can cause. Cyberattacks are estimated to cost the world USD$ 6 trillion this year, and a key figure in that calculation is the unprecedented rise of connected devices. The Internet of Things is the new era, with devices connected to the Internet enabling a more customized user experience. This does, however, also increase the number of devices at risk of cyberattacks, making cybersecurity a concern not just for businesses and industries, but also the average smartphone user.

While numerous protection schemes have proved to be useful and effective in certain situations against known attack threats, one of the biggest challenges is coping with the unknowns. Automation is already being explored as a tool to combat cyberattacks. Salvatore Fiorillo, Senior Consultant at Dubai Electronic Security Center (DESC), explained that 69 percent of business CEOs believe AI will be required to respond to cyberattacks, while 80 percent of executives in telecommunications believe they will be depending on AI in cybersecurity. Artificial Intelligence is one of the technologies that can be used to close the gap between knowledge-based threat detection and unknown or rapidly changing threats. AI could even foresee potential maliciousness in actors before they are known, offering great capabilities to overcome and help solve numerous challenges.

As cyberattacks start to target nation-states, countries around the world are instituting cybersecurity departments, with the UAE appointing its first Minister for Artificial Intelligence in October 2017 in its defense against cyber warfare. Fiorillo highlighted the impact a cyber attack can have on a country and how much a government relies on networked systems, citing the 2007 cyber attacks on Estonia as an example. Dr. Roberto Baldoni, Deputy Director General of the Department of Information for Security for Italy, agreed, explaining that the essential functions and services of a nation are digital, with energy, finance, welfare, defense and transport all at risk from cyberattacks. Creating a cyber-resilient nation is of paramount importance.

Dr. Mohamed Al-Kuwaiti, Head of Cyber Security for the UAE Government, Supreme Council for National Security, and Khalifa University alum, compared cybersecurity to the Covid-19 pandemic currently facing the world. People and organizations have suffered greatly from the coronavirus pandemic, with many critical lessons learned that can be applied to a potential global cyber pandemic. The start of the biological pandemic showed how unpreparedness around public health can have devastating effects, and this can be analogous to cybersecurity, with attention turning to protecting home users and remote workers.

“We hope to continue and move that hygiene that we adopted from the biological pandemic to the cyberspace,” Dr. Al-Kuwaiti explained. “Today, we can’t leave our homes without a mask or a sanitizer as a prevention measure. We make sure we don’t come into contact with anyone who could pose a risk. Cybersecurity is similar. We can quarantine an area of a network should a virus intrude. We can isolate such attacks and reduce the ‘infection’ rate between systems. The culture of building a very resilient network relies on all sectors from academia to industry.”

Following Dr. Al-Kuwaiti’s assertion that digital transformation is at the heart of the UAE’s national strategy, I wanted to share what we at Khalifa University are doing to research cybersecurity, particularly in the Robotics and Intelligent Systems Institute. In the last decade, the UAE has been investing heavily in transitioning from an oil-dependent economy to a Knowledge Economy. At the RISI, we’re aiming to coordinate the work done at KU in all ICT-related areas and boost its value for applications. Interestingly, we’re seeing that while AI can be extremely useful when dealing with cybersecurity solutions, it can be a double-edged sword. AI algorithms can be targeted too. To understand new threats, we as users need a clearer understanding of the lifecycle behind machine learning-based decision making and how systems are trained in the first place. Additionally, you can’t mention AI and not discuss blockchain these days. We are working on the idea of mapping threats to features of Distributed Ledger Technology, like blockchain. We can then use this technology as a security control framework to guarantee security to our machine learning data assets.

At Khalifa University, we’re proud to showcase our faculty expertise, especially in cybersecurity and its related fields as we continue to seek to expand the scope of our technology research, resulting in patents and technology transfer to start-ups.

Innov-Italy UAE aims at improving the opportunities for bilateral cooperation between the UAE and Italy in six high-innovation sectors, including cybersecurity, space, smart cities and sustainable mobility, life sciences, food technologies, and renewable energy.

Dr. Ernesto Damiani is Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Senior Director of the Robotics and Intelligent Systems Institute & Director of the Center for Cyber Physical Systems (C2PS) at Khalifa University.

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