Doha, Qatar (June 21, 2012) – Aspire Zone Foundation (AZF), the leading sport city in the Middle East, today entered into an agreement with the Qatar Mobility Innovations Center (QMIC), formerly QU Wireless Innovations Center (QUWIC), to collaborate on mobility innovations for smart sports solutions.
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is set to promote a common approach on the growth of digital-sport industry, as well as having a positive impact on the ambitious ICT agenda being pursued by Qatar.
Aspire Zone Foundation President, Mr. Hilal Al-Kuwari and QMIC Executive Director (CEO), Dr. Adnan Abu-Dayya led the MoU signing ceremony.
“The partnership between Aspire Zone Foundation and QMIC, two leaders in innovation, sends a strong message to all stakeholders that common pursuit of excellence brings opportunities for the benefit of sport industry, the audiences, and the market. It is indeed a proud moment for Qatar as we are able to drive innovation in the sports sector using our home grown technologies such as the QMIC solutions,” said Mr. Hilal Al-Kuwari, Aspire Zone Foundation President.
The aim of the MoU is to open up fresh avenues of collaboration on the development, piloting, and deployment of smart solutions and applications that address the needs of the emerging sport sector in Qatar.
In commemorating the signing event, Dr. Adnan Abu-Dayya, Executive Director of QMIC said: “This is a great day for all of us as two national pioneers – QMIC in mobility innovations and Aspire Zone Foundation in sports events – come together to partner on the development and deployment of locally made innovations within the field of sports. It has been one of QMIC’s goals to engage local entities in the cycle of innovations’ development and delivery. This partnership with AZF is a true example of how local entities can work together to deliver locally engineered innovations to the market.”
In particular, the parties will consider QMIC’s locally-developed Intelligent Transportation & Logistics Services (Masarak™) and the Air Quality Monitoring Solution (Hawa’ak) for potential use by AZF in managing its sports events and vast facilities.
Aspire Zone currently owns a world class portfolio of event management solutions which is a fully integrated suite of advanced IT platforms catering to accreditation, conference management, volunteer management, transportation management, and logistics support. “We believe in using technology to differentiate ourselves and stay competitive in the market. Aspire Zone will leverage the capabilities of QMIC’s Masarak solution in enhancing the management of transportation operations during any event especially in the real time tracking of time critical people and asset transportation”, said Abdulaziz Al-Mahmoud, the Director General of Aspire Logistics. Masarak, represents a major segment within the Smart Living Services initiative that was launched by QMIC in Oct. 2011 a. It addresses a gap in the market for an integrated and expandable suite of intelligent transportation and logistics services that are developed locally and customized to address the needs of Qatar and the region. Thanks to its local roots, Masarak can be ideally-tailored to the unique domestic needs of Qatar and would complement Aspire Zone initiatives to become a global leader in the event management technology space.
QMIC’s air quality monitoring system (Hawa’ak) is a rich and flexible platform fully developed locally to support real time monitoring of air quality and other environment conditions. It will allow users to access such information through innovative applications, which can be accessed through multiple channels including mobile delivery, web, SMS, and voice interaction. It utilizes a new generation of sensor stations that will allow the delivery of localized and personalized air quality information. Under the partnership, Aspire Zone will collaborate with QMIC for the implementation of Hawa’ak in the popular Aspire Zone Park and its surroundings. The system could be significant in helping attract visitors to the Aspire Zone by showing the weather readings in different areas of the premises, providing visitors with useful health and safety advisory information based on the weather conditions, thereby effectively enriching the AZF experience. It will additionally assist AZF coaches, students, and athletes on monitoring the weather conditions across the precinct.
Additionally, AZF and QMIC will explore other opportunities for collaboration within the sports field as part of the MoU, including the use of emerging sensing applications for crowd management and improving the overall user experience of sports spectators and performance of the athletes.
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About Aspire Zone Foundation
Aspire Zone Foundation is the spark that has ignited a fiery passion for sports and ushered an entire region of the world into a new era of sports development and sports as a means of healthy living.
Rising to international prominence through successful staging of 2006 Asian Games, Aspire Zone Foundation is home to some of the world’s finest sport stadia and venues offering a stimulating combination of sport, sports medicine and research, and sport education.
Originally having been established in 2003 as a Sports City project, Aspire Zone Foundation has carried on to evolve and today works to develop sports champions, promote healthy lifestyles and galvanize the sports economy of today, and of the future, through a network of special business units (SBUs): Aspire Academy for Sports Excellence, ASPETAR, and Aspire Logistics.
Aspire Zone Foundation was voted the World’s Leading Sports Tourism Development Project for the World Travel Awards 2011.
For further information please contact:
Philippa Innes
Email: [email protected]
Tel: +974 70218251
About QMIC
QMIC is an applied research and development center founded by Qatar University in Collaboration with and at the Qatar Science & Technology Park (QSTP) to leverage the use of emerging mobility and wireless technologies in creating solutions and smart applications for use in a number of markets including Transportation, Utilities, Healthcare, and Environment.
QMIC was founded with the objective of filling the existing gap in the region for institutions focusing on applied research and solutions delivery.
QMIC has strategic objectives in the areas of local capacity building, innovations leadership, and in becoming a virtual R&D center for local and regional partners.
For further information please contact
[email protected], +974 44592702.