Abu Dhabi moves from smart city to one that understands residents

Under the concept of the “smart city” adopted by the Department of Municipalities and Transport (DMT) in Abu Dhabi, a new philosophy of urban planning is emerging: urban growth is no longer measured by the number of buildings constructed, but by the city’s ability to accommodate its residents while providing services, mobility, public spaces and an environment conducive to a high quality of life.

The most significant transformation lies not only in the scale of investment, but in how technology is being used to inform decision-making. In June 2026, DMT launched new digital planning technologies, including the Nabd platform, which brings together data from the department’s systems, sensors and infrastructure into a three-dimensional digital model of the emirate.

The platform connects operational data from more than 70 data sources with over 15 interconnected systems, enabling infrastructure, services and quality-of-life indicators to be monitored at neighbourhood level. The first phase of the platform is scheduled to become operational in early 2027.

More importantly, the system does not simply show what is happening across the city. It helps planners answer a more fundamental question: Where should the city invest its resources first?

By linking infrastructure data with resident satisfaction surveys and quality-of-life indicators, authorities can identify local needs and direct capital expenditure towards projects capable of generating the greatest possible return in terms of quality of life.

In another major step, Abu Dhabi is deploying artificial intelligence and digital modelling not only to manage the existing city, but also to simulate the city before it is built.

Our Holographic Future, a real-time three-dimensional system, enables planners to test development scenarios before implementation. These scenarios can include pedestrian movement, shadow distribution, sightlines, building heights, green spaces and public areas, as well as the way these elements interact with one another.

This represents a shift from the traditional planning model of “build the project first, then assess its impact” towards a more proactive approach: “simulate the project first, then select the design that is most suitable for people.”

This approach is further supported by BINAA, an AI-powered platform launched in June 2025 as a building-permit platform. Since its launch, BINAA has helped reduce the average time required to issue residential villa building permits by 57% and cut resubmission requests by 53% by automating complex technical reviews.

In 2025, DMT issued more than 11,000 building permits, an increase of 15% compared with the previous year.

In the transport sector, the transformation is taking on an even more advanced dimension.

The Integrated Transport Centre launched the second version of the Fusion Smart Mobility Analysis System, powered by three-dimensional simulation of the real world. The system uses artificial intelligence, machine learning and big-data analytics to create an integrated digital model of transport networks and infrastructure across Abu Dhabi, Al Ain and Al Dhafra.

The system analyses billions of data points related to road traffic, public transport and road-user behaviour, helping reduce the time required to analyse traffic studies by up to 40%. This enables planners to test urban expansion scenarios and anticipate future challenges before they materialise.

Traffic Management Platform: 1,500 Cameras, 253 Vehicle Sensors and 922 Traffic Signals

At the same time, the central traffic management platform relies on more than 1,500 surveillance cameras, 253 vehicle sensors and 922 traffic signals, integrating data from more than 30 sources and displaying information through 122 electronic road signs across the road network.

Here, data becomes a daily operational tool: congestion, accidents and events are monitored and analysed, after which response plans can be activated automatically.

Infrastructure is increasingly being measured by the minutes it saves people.

One clear example of this changing investment philosophy is the project involving two marine bridges connecting Al Reem Island with Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Street.

The Dh450 million project has a capacity of up to 7,200 vehicles per hour, with travel times during peak periods expected to fall by as much as 60%, saving users up to 15 minutes.

But the project is not designed solely around cars. It also includes two kilometres of pedestrian and cycling paths, landscaped areas and smart lighting.

This reflects a broader shift in how the return on infrastructure investment is defined. The return is no longer limited to increasing road capacity; it also includes the time people regain in their day, ease of access, and their ability to walk, move around and use public spaces.

The second phase of Abu Dhabi’s Quality of Life Strategy is one of the clearest indicators of this transformation.

While the first phase focused on providing facilities and infrastructure, the second phase, launched in September 2026, has moved towards measuring the quality and efficiency of those facilities and their social impact, under a five-year roadmap.

During the first phase, the strategy delivered more than 60 major projects worth over Dh12 billion, as part of an approved programme valued at Dh42 billion.

The neighbourhood completeness index also increased from 67% to 84% in two years, marking a shift from simply measuring whether facilities exist to assessing how complete the environment is in meeting residents’ everyday needs.

The new phase includes a unified digital platform powered by intelligent analytics to monitor the condition of assets and infrastructure and the quality of facility operations, while linking them in real time to resident satisfaction survey results.

As a result, residents’ views themselves become part of the data ecosystem capable of influencing spending and investment decisions.

The results of quality-of-life surveys reinforce this approach.

In the fifth edition of the survey, conducted in 2024, more than 100,000 people representing 190 nationalities participated. The survey covered 14 social indicators, including housing, health, education, security, the environment, social relationships, digital quality of life, happiness and wellbeing.

The results showed that 93.6% of residents felt safe walking at night, while the happiness index rose to 7.74 out of 10, compared with 7.63 in the previous edition.

In the 2025 edition, participation increased to 115,801 people, reflecting the expansion of the community data base that can be used in shaping policies and services.

Quality of life is inseparable from the urban environment... In 2024, more than 200 parks and beaches were opened, while approximately 84% of participants in the Smart Cities Index expressed satisfaction with the availability and maintenance of green spaces.

In smart parks, 1,400 sensors have been installed across seven parks to measure indicators including soil moisture, energy consumption and air quality. This transforms green spaces from purely aesthetic features into measurable urban assets that can be managed intelligently.

Previous quality-of-life projects have also included more than 120 kilometres of walking paths, 283 kilometres of cycling tracks and approximately 220 kilometres of new lighting, in addition to around 200 urban landscape improvement projects.

The impact of this integrated system is reflected in smart-city indicators... Abu Dhabi rose to fifth globally in the 2025 IMD Smart City Index, compared with 10th in 2024 and 14th in 2020.

The index, which covered 146 cities and incorporates residents’ views on infrastructure and technology, found that 82% of respondents were satisfied with the public transport network.

Public buses recorded more than 90 million journeys in 2024, while the marine transport network was used by more than 168,000 passengers.

In the same year, DMT invested AED3.4 billion in mobility and road projects, including a project that helped reduce average morning peak-period delays by as much as 80% on Al Khaleej Al Arabi Street.

These figures reveal the emergence of an integrated system in Abu Dhabi in which infrastructure intersects with data, artificial intelligence, private investment, urban planning and quality of life.

The Dh55 billion portfolio of public-private partnership projects is not limited to roads. Some Dh35 billion is allocated to transport, Dh11 billion to water and environmental infrastructure, and Dh9 billion to social infrastructure.

At the same time, 75 million square metres of approved urban development in a single year demonstrates the scale of growth and the need for a planning system capable of operating at a comparable speed. This helps explain the expansion of AI-powered tools and digital planning platforms.

This is where the significance of the transformation lies... Artificial intelligence in Abu Dhabi is not appearing only in the form of robots or autonomous vehicles. It is increasingly becoming part of the core urban decision-making process — from determining where schools, parks and roads should be located, to analysing traffic flows, evaluating designs, issuing permits and identifying investment priorities.

What Abu Dhabi is shaping is a gradual transition from the concept of the “smart city” towards a more comprehensive model that could be described as a “human-responsive city” — a city that uses technology to understand the needs of its residents, data to establish priorities, artificial intelligence to simulate the future, and public and private investment to turn these models into real infrastructure.

Under this model, the success of a project is not measured by the volume of concrete used or the number of kilometres of roads built, but by measurable questions:

How many minutes did the project save residents?

Did the school or clinic become more accessible?

Did air quality improve?

Did green spaces increase?

Did neighbourhoods become more walkable?

Are facilities being used efficiently and delivering a tangible social impact?

This is the fundamental shift taking place in Abu Dhabi’s urban development model: human quality of life is moving from being a by-product of development to becoming a core criterion for determining where money is invested, how cities are designed and what the city should build next.

With the launch of the second phase of the Quality of Life Strategy, the expansion of data- and AI-powered planning platforms, and the AED55 billion infrastructure project portfolio, Abu Dhabi is entering a new phase focused not merely on building the city of the future, but on creating an urban system capable of anticipating human needs before they become urban challenges.