128 Smart Gates at Dubai International for border control

In her presentation at the Global Airport Leaders Forum (GALF) which is part of the co-located with the Airport Show at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre (DICEC), Radwa Hozien, chief software officer at emaratech, a technology and management consulting company of the Investment Corporation Dubai (ICD), said DXB last year handled an average of 120,000 passengers daily in the peak time, with the processing time for immigration formalities taking a few  seconds to process per passenger.

According to the IATA, 80 per cent of the global passengers will be offered with a complete and relevant self-service suite throughout their journeys even as iris biometric becoming more and more accurate, she said, adding the Next-Gen technology has been helping process the entry and exit of passengers amazing faster than ever before. Technology, she added, has been helping the airport and other authorities to know the passenger much before he/she arrives at the airport for their journeys.

In his keynote address, Abdulqader Ali, CEO of Smartworld, the telecom provider for Dubai South and Managed Services provider for UAE government entities, said there will be 30 million Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) by 2021, posing a serious challenge to the functioning of airports across the world. The scenario has been undergoing a paradigm shift from them being gradually shifting from 2D to 3D, requiring new technologies to stop UAS posing challenges and threats and controlling them effectively.