Skip to main content

First Middle East ITS conference and exhibition

The first Middle East conference and exhibition on ITS, held in December 2006 in Dubai, was opened by His Excellency Eng. Abdullah Al- Mogbel, the president of ITS Arab and Deputy Minister of Transport, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The two-day conference, the theme of which was 'Shaping the Future with ITS Solutions', focused on traffic safety, congestion, security and demand management. H.E Eng. Abdullah Al-Mogbel said, "ITS Arab will play a vital role in the development of sustainable ITS deployments across t
March 12, 2013 Read time: 3 mins
The first Middle East conference and exhibition on ITS, held in December 2006 in Dubai, was opened by His Excellency Eng. Abdullah Al- Mogbel, the president of 1697 ITS Arab and Deputy Minister of Transport, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The two-day conference, the theme of which was 'Shaping the Future with ITS Solutions', focused on traffic safety, congestion, security and demand management.

H.E Eng. Abdullah Al-Mogbel said, "ITS Arab will play a vital role in the development of sustainable ITS deployments across the Middle East and North Africa in partnership with the regional and international ITS community".

Fabrizio Minarini, Head of Sector, Intelligent Car Initiative, 1690 European Commission, praised ITS Arab and expressed support from the European Commission to the conference.
Richard Barnes, London Assembly Member: "It is now an accepted policy across all the main political parties in the United Kingdom that ITS is an absolute must. The problem we have is that we are not sure what ITS means, why we are doing it, and we have not fully developed an integrated approach." Barnes shared his experience in policy development that provided thought-provoking debates and provided a political balance from a European perspective. His contribution provided the link between ITS and security, reinforcing the importance of developing and communicating clear ITS policy objectives to the wider public.

Barnes's view was echoed by the Dr Essam Sharaf, former Minister of Transport, Egypt, who suggested the use of asset management systems as an approach to communicating ITS objectives and benefits to politicians and the general public. Dr Sharaf added, "Studies from around the world have concluded that the transport infrastructure satisfies both the natural human desire to mobility, as well as being vital for economical prosperity, and therefore ranks transport infrastructure as one of the most important projects." "The key word is integration, by marrying transport infrastructure with ITS technologies we will see a completely new type of transport infrastructure that looks the same but will provide a new way of delivering mobility function." The business case for ITS benefits was reinforced by Riyadh Dabbo, Managing Director, Arab Road Safety Organisation, when he presented the shocking statistics regarding human losses, which show that within the Arab countries there are 32,000 traffic fatalities every year. Worldwide the transport fatalities total 1.2 million with 12 million injuries. "In terms of human losses, we have a 9/11 every day around the world," Dabbo said.

%$Linker: 2 External <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><dictionary /> 0 0 0 oLinkExternal www.nfm-bauma.de www.nfm-bauma.de false http://www.nfm-bauma.de/ false false%>

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Austrian Ministry of Transport to bring Gerd Leonhard to TRA 2018
    January 25, 2018
    The Austrian Ministry of Transport will bring author and futurist Gerd Leonhard to the Transport Research Arena (TRA) 2018 in Vienna where he will speak about the importance of new technologies and the role of humans in the digital world of mobility. This year’s overall theme is on digitalisation in mobility and will focus on the compatibility between technology and user-friendly mobility.
  • Connected cones make for safer sites
    May 31, 2013
    David Crawford welcomes new lives for old road safety products. Traffic cones and barrels have traditionally been on the bottom shelf of the road construction and maintenance industry, typically forming visible soft safety barriers for temporary works at a lower cost than concrete alternatives. On both sides of the Atlantic, however, they are fast gaining new roles as instrumented components in advanced construction safety arrays. The EC-sponsored €1 million (US$1.31 million) Safelane collaborative innovati
  • G&D puts Guest of Honour country Brazil in the CIPURSE smartcard spotlight at CARTES 2013
    November 19, 2013
    Giesecke & Devrient and Infineon have joined forces to provide “contactless smartcards compliant with the CIPURSE Open Standard in Volume Quantities” and will be able to discuss here at CARTES 2013 how these new cards “are being used today in Brazil”.
  • Associations News from around the world
    December 4, 2012
    The world’s ITS Associations participated in the ITS World Congress in Vienna, including: New Zealand, which stressed the need for future proof ITS solutions; the Netherlands; Australia called for greater ITS content in road safety strategy; ITS South Africa discussed new strategic opportunities in the country; ITS Nigeria took advantage of the World Congress to stage its global launch; UK ITS professionals were congratulated on their achievements during the Olympic Games by ITS UK; ITS Canada co-hosted a w