Smart Dubai and Arup Middle East have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to collaborate in exploring how the built environment can contribute to enhancing community happiness and wellbeing, especially in a smart world where technology plays an increasingly important role.
The 20-week agreement will see both entities put their knowledge and expertise at the disposal of one another to move forward towards Dubai’s stated objective of becoming the world’s happiest city.
The Emirate developed the Happiness Agenda for that objective, which is overseen by Smart Dubai.
For its part, Arup has conducted extensive research on how to improve happiness and community wellbeing through multidisciplinary city planning and design.
The findings and outcomes of the collaboration will be shared with the public in 2019.
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Her Excellency Dr Aisha Bint Butti Bin Bishr, Director General of Smart Dubai, said: “While we are indeed on a mission to transform Dubai into a world leader in smart cities and advanced technologies, Smart Dubai has never regarded technology as an end in itself, but rather a means to make life easier and more enjoyable for the citizens, residents and visitors of the emirate, and to spread happiness among them.
“Smart Dubai is the entity officially entrusted with overseeing the Happiness Agenda,” Dr Aisha added, “which is a ground-breaking, science-based approach that measures the happiness of individuals in the city and builds on that to design and implement initiatives that serve people and make them happier.
“We have already launched several successful initiatives that have raised the city’s score on the Happiness Index to 90% in 2016. We are now aiming for an ambitious 95% by 2021.”
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