Workshop Synopsis

The world population is increasingly urbanized, and it raises a number of concerns about the capabilities of cities to handle urban growth and to address basic problems. Therefore, entrepreneurs initiate technological interventions that helps the development of cities by producing new innovations in order to become smart cities. These innovations could be small or large-scaled technological advancements, but they all depend on gathering information and data from people or organizations whether they are connected via internet or other methods, which we will explore in the session. Such technological advancements stem from using or modifying existing resources effectively for the betterment of environment, services, or economy, while some technologies can initiate new partnerships between the public and the private sectors; of which all help the cities’ goal of becoming smarter and efficient. This session will explore different global examples of smart cities and what is being applied here in Qatar, and how the public-private partnership has benefited global cities and how entrepreneurs utilized the data at hand to tackle some of the cities’ issues. The session will task the participants to look at data from another perspective and how they can apply the available information for the growth of their smart cities in an entrepreneurial setting