Smart City Playbook

Tourism

Usecases

Responsive Crowd Management

The responsive crowd management initiative will enable the proactive monitoring of and response to crowds’ behaviors and movements in dense areas of Al Madinah city such as the areas around the mosques and religious sites, as well as the city center. As the city is growing with the ambition to host over 30 million visitors by 2030, the need to better manage crowd movements becomes essential to accommodate this ambition. This initiative will leverage digital technologies such as video analytics, facial recognition, AI and others to count the number of people at a specific time and location and provide decision makers and city planners with the right tools and actionable insights to increase crowd’s safety and security and better manage city resources and people movements around the city to enhance their experience and make it more pleasant.

KEY

CHALLENGES

Authorities are not empowered with the necessary tools and capabilities to devise tourism plans, promote the city sites, and respond to visitors’ needs

Visitors have limited access to high-quality, scalable, and flexible city resources and services to visitors’ needs

Visitors lack smart navigation tools, accessible tour guiding, and effective communication

KEY EXPECTED BENEFITS

Increased Safety

Visitors will receive better services that cater to their needs

Increased Productivity

Fieldworkers will be able to operate in a hands-free environment with the use of digitally augmented hosts, helping them increase their productivity on the ground

Better Satisfaction

Visitors and residents will better enjoy religious and non-religious service offerings

ALIGNMENT TO SMART CITY OBJECTIVES

Pleasant

TARGET USERS

Tourism Authorities

The Governing Entities

USE CASE

JOURNEY

Mahmoud, an operations manager, works in Al Madinah command center and monitors the crowd movement within the city.

Few days before Eid al Adha, the influx of visitors is at its highest. One of his team members from the command center receives a notification of high traffic congestion from deployed CCTV and IoT sensors distributed around Al Haram area and the highly visited areas within Al Madinah city.

He calls Mahmoud to authorize a digital signage alert and the enablement of remotely controlled gates to re-route some lanes on the road and ease traffic congestion.

Mahmoud gives him the green light to display temporary signaling messages to mitigate the traffic and send an officer to investigate in order to provide a smooth and efficient journey for the pilgrims and visitors of Al Madinah city.

POTENTIAL SERVICE FEATURES

Mobile-enabled IoT sensors

CCTV video analytics

AI-powered simulation and scenario analysis

Automatic event detection

Bluetooth beacons

Facial recognition

Wearables

Thermal counting



KEY TOUCH POINTS

Mobile app

Website

Surveys

Dashboards

Implementation
Timeline

Within 6 months

12 – 18 months

Within 6 months

Technology Commercial Viability

Currently commercialized

1 – 3 years to commercialize

5+ years to
commercialize

Regulatory Conduciveness

No New Policies and
Standards

Some Policies &
Standards to be
Introduced

Complex Policies to be
Introduced

Investment Requirement

Low

Medium

High

Use Case Ownership

Government Driven

Piloted by Gov. & Transitioned to Private Sector

Private Sector

Startups & Entrepreneurs

IMPLEMENTATION CONSIDERATIONS

Internet network coverage and connectivity across the city

Availability of continuous connectivity to monitor and track movements in real time and in a secure manner

POTENTIAL TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS

IN THE MARKET

Tourism

Use Cases

City Living Museum

Advanced
 Wayfinder App

“Al Madinah Explorer” Digital Platform

City B2B Tourism Marketplace

Smart Airport

Smart District

Platform for Connecting City Residents with Visitors “Diyafah Al Madinah”

Digitally
Augmented Hosts

Rapid Deployable Accommodation System “Hayyak” Initiative

Responsive Crowd Management