Page 4 - SAMENA Trends - November-December 2019

EDITORIAL SAMENA TRENDS

AR and VR in Smart Cities

Smart cities, while still lacking a standard job market.
definition within the Industry, are among the
most exciting of ideas driving innovation and The ability to enter an “alternative reality”
investment in digital infrastructure, as well offers various advantages in a digitally driven
as synergies among the telecom and non- environment. For example, AR can be used
telecom sectors. Objectives of smart cities to bypass the cumbersome process of filling
are efficiency in resource utilization, improved static digital forms, the same objective of data
citizen services, and an overall betterment in collection and application processing can be
lifestyle of citizens. conducted through a more interactive and
pleasant process. Another example of AR/VR/
In view of the complexities of materializing MR use could be in tourism, whereby tourists
a smart city and given the potential of ease, can be given glimpses into the history or on
efficiency, and accuracy that new technologies what to expect during their travel experiences.
banking on the modern fourth and fifth- Or, still another example could be the use Bocar A. BA
Chief Executive Officer &
generation network may offer, both public of VR/AR in schools, to allow students to be Board Member
and private-sector stakeholders are finding more engaged in learning by experiencing SAMENA Telecommunications
it necessary to strategize and collaborate on concepts that are traditionally taught only Council
leveraging the new immersive technologies, in theory, and thus enabling schools to be
including Augmented Reality and Virtual much more engaging. The latter need is of
Reality. Both of these related technologies, particular importance to the public schools,
among many, when combined with other in their ability to revamp education and instill respect to ensuring privacy and
technologies such as IoT, AI, and cloud can quality education among students. And all of ownership, use, and access
catalyze a myriad of new opportunities. AR these handful of scenarios of the use of reality of collected data. There are
and VR, while being the front end technologies, technologies mentioned here are integral to numerous other issues to
utilizing sensor technologies, IoT, big data, running a successful, sustainable, and citizen- consider, of course.
cloud computing, etc, to create the promise centered smart city.
of a people-centric environment, hold a lot of In the age of smart cities,
opportunities. Augmented reality can be the Thus aspirations toward building an entirely immersive digital experiences
interface that can facilitate access to benefits new realm of digital experiences, close will open up a set of
of a smart city, as with AR, it is possible to to those in real-life, awaits the world and conveniences and issues, and
interact with the normal environment. numerous sectors, adjacent to Telecom, such thus it is important to consider
as financial services, healthcare services, immediately implementable use-
While immersive technologies, that is AR, VR, educational facilities, multimedia content, cases for immersive technologies
or MR (mixed reality) still require several more e-government, among others, can directly across all industries and sectors,
years to achieve maturity, experimentation benefit from immersive technologies. The while also re-thinking cyber-
and use-specific implementations are question, however, now has emerged: Who security in new light. Just as
well underway. There exists a wide range owns augmented spaces that government and various organizations from both
of possibilities that have been linked to businesses need to work together to regulate? private-sector and public sectors
immersive technologies. For example, AR have proposed frameworks for
offers convenience in use, scalability, new Additionally, as the AR environment practically the responsible use of Artificial
types of content, new user experiences, and requires a lot of data to be collected and Intelligence, similar approach
these benefits are important across large recorded about individuals and surroundings, needs to be exercised for the use
industries that account for most of the world’s we are faced with mounting challenges with of reality technologies.

4 NOVEMBER 2019