Speaker: Prof. Rashid Mehmood

Professor of Big Data Systems, Director of Research, Training and Consultancy, High Performance Computing Center, King Abdul Aziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Office: +966 12 6400000 (Ext: 67502), Mobile: +966 537069318

Title: Smart Cities Technologies, Infrastructure and Applications

Abstract: Smart cities provide next generation engineering approaches for urbanization, having evolved from knowledge-based economy, digital economy and intelligent economy. Smart cities aim to exploit the intellectual and social capital as its core ingredient for urbanization, in addition to the physical and ICT infrastructure. Smart cities are driven by several interdependent trends. These include a pressing need for environmental sustainability, and peoples’ increasing demands for personalization, mobility and higher quality of life. Technological developments such as miniaturisation of devices, internet of things (IoT), big data, computational and artificial intelligence, and decreasing costs of computational entities have also accelerated the smart cities developments. Smart cities encompass all aspects of modern day life, transportation, healthcare, entertainment, work, businesses, social interactions, governance, etc. It is therefore necessary to engineer smart cities as complex systems of systems supported by a converged ubiquitous infrastructure. A key challenge in the realisation of smart cities is to create an ecosystem of digital infrastructures that are able to work together and enable dynamic real-time interactions between various smart city subsystems. In this talk I would trace the evolution of smart cities with the aim to explore the state of the art of infrastructure underlying smart cities. The technologies focus would be on IoT, big data, AI and high performance computing.

Speaker Biography:

Rashid is the Research Professor of Big Data Systems and the Director for Research, Training and Consultancy at the High Performance Computing Centre, King AbdulAziz University, Saudi Arabia. He has gained qualifications and academic work experience from universities in the UK including Cambridge, Swansea, Birmingham and Oxford. Rashid has over 20 years of research experience in computational modelling and simulation systems coupled with his expertise in high performance computing. His broad research aim is to develop multi-disciplinary science and technology to enable better quality of life and Smart Economy with a focus on real-time intelligence and dynamic system management. He has published over 100 research papers including 4 edited books. He has organised and chaired international conferences and workshops in his areas of expertise including EuropeComm 2009 and Nets4Cars 2010 - 2013. He has led and contributed to academia-industry collaborative projects funded by EPSRC, EU, UK regional funds, and Technology Strategy Board UK with value over £50 million. He is a founding member of the Future Cities and Community Resilience (FCCR) Network. He is a member of ACM, OSA, Senior Member IEEE and former Vice-Chairman of IET Wales SW Network.