Between His Excellency Dr. Ali Mohamed Al-Khouri, during his speech at the Digital Economy Conference and Exhibition (Seamless Middle East 2017), which will be held in Dubai May 1-2 2017, that between 2020-2025 there will be more than 88 smart cities in the world, as these cities will contribute to achieving the goals of economic development, Improving the quality of life, and effective management of sustainable development goals. He pointed out that smart solutions will contribute to saving more than a trillion dollars in the field of energy only in the United States of America, and that smart systems in their entirety will radically change the shape of the world.

He added that the highest per capita energy use in the world is in the Arab world, and that smart cities can contribute to improving energy savings and significantly improving energy efficiency. He also pointed out that smart cities will also contribute to improving mobility and traffic, as it is expected that there will be more than 10 million smart vehicles by the year 2020 in the world, and that smart systems can help reduce the cost of traffic accidents, especially as it amounts to about $500 billion in today’s statistics. globally.

He added that smart city technologies will help the agricultural sector in various fields, whether in growing the appropriate and most demanded crops, methods of promoting and selling, controlling the health status of plants, and reducing waste rates, noting that the surplus production of food around the world is equivalent to one billion tons annually, according to the United Nations report in In 2013, malnutrition causes the death of more than 3 million children annually worldwide.

Al-Khouri added that smart cities will employ 3D printing technology, which will contribute to reducing construction costs, reducing time by up to 80%, and reducing construction waste rates to more than 60%.

Al-Khouri indicated that the world is moving to rely more on electronic markets and that it will gradually rely on virtual reality technology, which is expected to reach investments in this sector to more than 160 billion dollars by 2020.

He stressed that there is a new global digital economy coming, and the world will witness an economy of virtual encrypted digital currencies, supported by financial systems that cannot be traced, and that this may have economic, social and security repercussions, which require that they be well studied.

He also pointed out that with the growing concept of the digital economy, cyber risks are heading towards specific goals, as international reports indicate that the cost to the global economy as a result of cybercrime and attacks exceeds $400 billion annually.