RCU’s Andrew Rippon Explains The Genius Behind Saudi Arabia’s AlUla

The development of AlUla, a historic Saudi tourism hotspot, encompasses a broad range of initiatives across archaeology, tourism, culture, education and the arts, reflecting the ambitious commitment to cultivating tourism and leisure in Saudi Arabia set out in the national Vision 2030 transformation program.

Speaking exclusively to Thirty To Net Zero Magazine, the Smart City Director for The Royal Commission for AlUla, Andrew Rippon, explained: “AlUla is thousands of years old. AlUla County is designed to be an outdoor museum. However, it still has to have a mix of modern with the ancient. Our aim is to preserve ancient and natural beauty. We have used digital twinning, GIS data, blockchain digital ledgers, AI, video, and many other technologies to monitor biodiversity and enhance the visitor experience, citizen liveability, and mobility. We have developed a digital trust layer relevant to multiple stakeholders.”

Mobility, conservation of natural resources, safety and security, crisis management, energy management and other functions, that are ubiquitous to a sustainable smart city, all rely on systems requiring an extensive use of IoT sensors, and other hardware, as well as a massive re-organisation of networks. The AlUla smart city has curated its smart technologies mix such that it supports the citizens of today and tomorrow.

“We are 45,000 citizens today and we had over 200,000 visitors last year. Our vision is to grow the citizen strength to 150,000 over the next ten years and the visitor number to two million. We are slowly introducing technologies to develop citizen livability and visitor experience while maintaining the biodiversity and history of this region,” he said.

The AlUla master plan is conceived as a model of responsible and sustainable development, representing a unique opportunity for companies that share those values. One of the masterplan’s key drivers in ensuring the sustainable development of the region is its yet-to-be-approved ‘AlUla Sustainability Charter’, which sets out a framework of principles guiding AlUla’s future development to create a new path focused on protection, preservation, and regeneration. The charter sets out a carbon-neutral policy supported by circular economy principles, with the goal of AlUla being net carbon neutral by 2035 for local emissions (excluding air travel and food imports).

As a direct response to the challenges of sustainably and responsibly developing a fragile desert environment, the replenishment of the 9km core of the Cultural Oasis - through research and innovative solutions - will be the second flagship element of the master plan. Enabling a major expansion of AlUla’s green and open spaces of up to 10 million square meters, providing a haven for the archaeological sites, an opportunity for sustainable agricultural production, as well as an enchanting experience for visitors.

“Sustainability is a whole track with over 40 projects under sustainability. With the ocean just 250kms away, we hope to develop a micro-hydrogen power station and use the fuel in both public transport and industry.

“We also have 6 projects on policy regulation for smart cities including incorporation of international best practices, and setting up smart codes like building codes,” said Rippon.

A trust layer is a smart city system that ensures trust over disparate digital systems owned by multiple stakeholders. When these stakeholders are confident that  data can be trusted on other stakeholders’ systems, , then processes accelerate and costs reduce.

“Our trust layer is composed of many layers that include distributed ledgers, single sources of truth, systems of recordand much more. Our project planners have a stupendous task of working around the 23,000 architectural sites and preserving the AlUla heritage. The city master plans have been developed around these sites and we are adding ‘smartness’ over time, using technology such as sensors, computer vision, and geofencing to enhance our safeguards, helping us maintain the history of this region,” said Rippon.

At the beginning of the year, a new fully autonomous pod vehicle service was launched in AlUla along side our partners ZF 2GetThere and RATP DEV. More recently, a second pod has started testign from the autonomous provider EasyMile. On the software and IoT front, the French group Thales has signed an MoU with The Royal Commission for AlUla to implement its smart and sustainable city. With a strong track record in delivering solutions that support smart, liveable and sustainable cities, Thales will provide the Royal Commission an ecosystem of solutions.

“Today there is no public transportation at AlUla. Our aim is to first provide a sustainable and liveable city for our citizens. We want our citizens to have both social and physical mobility. We have a central spine road that runs from North to South. Citizens live along that road and then we have more roads leading off to industrial and leisure centres. With the help of RATP DEV, a leading Global provider of transportation, we have planned for a cloud of small buses and  host of Mobility as a Service options to take the citizens from their homes to their workplaces or for leisure activities and leverage the tram project as well,” he said. The Tram is being designed and deliered by the international mobility firm Systra and will connect AlUla County’s most important landmarks, archaeological sites, tourist destinations, urban areas and transport infrastructure.

Last year, the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU), released ‘The Journey Through Time’ masterplan for the regeneration of AlUla. Implementation of the wider development strategy for AlUla will welcome 2 million visitors a year into its 9,400 hotel rooms and contribute 120 billion riyals (USD 32 billion) to Saudi GDP as it creates 38,000 new jobs.

Key assets in the regeneration of AlUla as a tourism destination include the newly expanded AlUla International Airport which now has a capacity of 400,000 passengers and Maraya, a 500-seat multipurpose venue and the world’s largest mirrored building, has been the site of the 41st GCC Summit and Winter at Tantora, an annual cultural event.

AlUla’s roster of hospitality partners so far features Habitas and Accor/Banyan Tree with an expansion of the Ashar Resort and in the future the Architect Jean Nouvel, who is designing an extraordinary resort that will be entirely carved into the native rock;.

 “We have planned for flagship tourism projects to be the focus of economic diversification. We are in the process of to upskill local Saudi nationals to operate and maintain new technologies that will be brought into use in AlUla.  Already we are employing local people in our mobility hub and we hope to attract mobility providers to develop services in the County. We hope that this hubcan then service projects across the nation,” concluded Andrew Rippon.