Smartworld, a joint venture company between Etisalat and Dubai South, says its agreement with EkinnoLab, a Polish software house specialising in mobile applications development and testing services, will accelerate that development of smart cities in the UAE.

The collaborating companies have launched Park & X solutions a series of services for a variety of industries and sectors including transportation, entertainment, hospitality, free zones and aviation sector.

Serving multiple purposes by integrating mobility solutions with value-added services, Park & X can benefit business people, tourists and future Expo 2020 Village visitors, Smartworld said in a statement.

The solutions include NaviParking, an app which navigates users to available parking spots. As a horizontal platform open to integration with City Open Data and third-party providers, NaviParking’s data hub evolves into multimodal transportation platform, where parking is one of the services, Smartworld explained.

“In order to assure seamless mobility and the best customer experiences, parking can be integrated with aviation transport (Park & Fly), public transport (Park & Ride), reservation of a co-working space (Park & Work), EV charging station (Park & Charge), shopping malls (Park & Shop) and any other Point of Interest/service that could optimize and improve customer’s daily trip.

“The Park & X mockup solution at the Smartworld premises uses Philips Lighting Indoor positioning as one of the cutting edge technologies integrated with the NaviParking platform. Indoor positioning from Philips Lighting uses patented Visible Light Communication technology recognized by a smartphone camera for easy wayfinding in the building. A location-aware smartphone can be used to trigger location-based services and features as: Check-in/out with automatically filling work time sheet; Making reservation of a single desk or the whole conference room; Finding coworkers in the building; Ordering food, drink, services like parking, EV charging station; and Lights control via an application.

The NaviWorkspace application can also use other than LED-based Indoor Positioning technologies for navigation in the building. When combining indoor navigation with outdoor GPS, the solution assures end-to-end mobility for the customer’s convenience. NaviWorkspace serves as an extension and complementary solution to NaviParking – a building block within the same Smart City platform.

“Smartworld is honored to partner with EkinnoLab for this unique initiative, which will cater to the rapidly-rising demand for smart city solutions. With this initiative we reaffirm our commitment to support the UAE leadership’s vision to make the UAE, a smart country,” said Abdulqader Ali, CEO of Smartworld.

Marek Stawinski, founder of EkinnoLab added: “The strategic partnership with Smartworld having a strong foothold on UAE market is a milestone and a distinction for our company. With fluctuating customers’ needs and growing popularity for on-demand services, businesses integration is crucial to remain dynamic and keep up with emerging technology trends. Leveraging Polish expertise in Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, we aim to jointly develop comprehensive Smart City solutions for Emirates, tailored to exceed customer needs.”