CITIX returns to Dubai to make city safer
The company from Kazakhstan had made substantial impression at EXPO in Dubai
At Expo 2020 Dubai, one of the most visited pavilions was that of Kazakhstan. The Central Asian country surprised Expo guests with innovative technologies, and one stood out among the rest – an urban gadget smartboard, created to solve the problems of dense city traffic and streets being overloaded by outdoor advertising. The gadget is designed by CITIX, the company that has been building smart cities with digital infrastructure in Kazakhstan for three years.
Now company expands its activities by entering global market and opening a representative office in Dubai. CITIX is a Smart City and AdTech company. It created technologies for modern cities, to digitize their infrastructure, and make urban environment more comfortable for the residents.
The main product is the smartboard, a gadget that can integrate with city services, collect and analyze data, and automatically communicate information to people: assist them with navigation, show the best routes based on traffic, display public safety alerts, and other notifications. It is a unique integrated Smart City and AdTech solution.
The company has built a network of 100 smartboards in the two largest cities of Kazakhstan - Almaty and Nur-Sultan. Now it is ready to launch a pilot project in Dubai. The company founders believe that smartboards could play an important role in creating a digital road infrastructure in the city and become an essential element similar to road signs and traffic lights. It can help Dubai become more environment-friendly, as well.
How does the smartboard work?
It is designed like a next-generation computer or a smartphone. Smartboard is a gadget with unlimited possibilities for modern cities: it can connect to new services and become more and more useful for city residents, just like new apps can be installed on a smartphone, thereby expanding its functionality.
CITIX team used its original technology in creating the smartboard. It is fully assembled in Kazakhstan, with unique design and interface, and patented software EYWA.
Dubai and other modern large cities are overwhelmed with static banners, signage, and digital screens. However, the main advantage of the smartboard in its ability to reduce the visual noise. Smartboard is not just another LED-screen, but also a completely new tool for interaction between the city and its residents.
Due to its wide functionality, one smartboard can replace a hundred of banners and street screens. It is a solution for “banner blindness” issue, which causes a decrease in road safety.
In the process of creating smartboards, the company was inspired by the simple and concise interface of smartphones and focused on the universal language of road signs. Smartboard is intuitive to everyone, so drivers and pedestrians can instantly understand necessary information and not waste time analyzing it.
In addition, the smartboard is an eco–friendly and stylish gadget. It does not pollute the visual appearance of the city and at the same time saves the metropolis from a huge amount of toxic waste associated with the production and disposal of the classic banners.
When it comes to the local market, in Kazakhstan the smartboard is used for different purposes. It helps with street navigation: informs drivers about the traffic jams and provides them detour schemes, suggests the distance and convenient route to the sights, parks, hospitals, shopping centres and other key facilities. It also detects air pollution index level, displays information about the nearest flights on the way to the airport, instantly notifies the residents about emergency situations, and so much more. All these functions are available due to integration with the city services.
CITIX provides entire digital infrastructure for these integrations. The project is open to cooperate with state and commercial services to implement projects for a comfortable stay for people in an urban environment.
One of such cases is integration with the fire and ambulance services that the company has implemented this year. The smartboards now warn the drivers on the road ahead of time when the service vehicles are approaching, which means that the firefighters and doctors can get to people in need of help faster. This is a project that saves lives.
In Kazakhstan the company is actively building up the functionality of the smartboard, connecting to more and more new urban services. Blockchain technology was introduced to guarantee security and transparency to both the authorities and all other partners.
Why Dubai as the first market for expansion?
Yana Shoibekova, the CEO and ideological inspirer of CITIX, says that team plans to launch the pilot projects in several cities. So, now Dubai was considered one of priorities as it is one of the most technologically advanced cities aimed at digital transformation, targeting high-tech solutions.
CITIX is ready for global expansion: it has the technology for this, along with successfully functioning cases, investments, a strong team, and state support at the international level. For instance, the QazTrade Accelerator Programme initiated under the Ministry of Trade and Integration of the Republic of Kazakhstan is promoting the company to enter the UAE market.
The company strongly believes that they will find partners and friends in Dubai who share their desire to create new experience of interaction between technology and human and make the world a better place to live in.
