Muscat Smart City project - getting smart about traffic in Oman
The nation’s extreme climate, high standard of living and the need for thorough interconnection between its urban transport systems comprise the basic concepts that drive the project in Muscat, Oman, which started out in 2012. This year, together with the company Incinity, CROSS has extended it to include Muscat amongst the “smart cities” connected to the Invipo platform.
We first installed a traffic light controller in Oman back in 2012, which has since been joined by another 75 devices for smart traffic management, mainly in the areas of Muscat and Sohar. The biggest challenges faced were the conditions of the extreme climate and fully localizing and adapting the equipment for connection to third-party systems. The end result is a functional management system for intersections that we are constantly expanding on.
The potential for smart cities in Oman is very high and the desire exists to enhance the level of smart traffic management in place, thereby raising the quality of life for the populace, cutting the consumption of resources and making its municipalities a better place to inhabit. 2020 shall be the year the first Omani city is covered by the Invipo platform. This system gives an overview of an entire location and centralizes all data for thorough evaluation, enabling traffic to be managed effectively along with other aspects of life in such a smart city.
The Muscat Smart City project, with the involvement of CROSS, aims to simplify traffic in the city over the next 4 years, implement smart devices in the city and incorporate traffic sensors and detectors in the data system. Consequently, officers will have highly accurate data to hand as to the situations on roads, if sites are experiencing congestion, the time it takes to travel from one end of the city to the other and where any untapped potential exists to facilitate transit.
Muscat is to be the first Omani city to connect to the Invipo Smart City platform. This represents an initial step towards the country becoming technically advanced, a nation whose smart cities employ the latest technologies and data to enable economic and ecological sustainability and improve the quality of life in its cities.