The ComSoc Saudi Chapter, represented by its chair, Dr. Abdullah AlMuttiri, held an event at Qassim University at the beginning of January 2018. This event consisted of three consecutive lectures, in the central theatre, targeting faculty members and students from different faculties across the university.
The first lecture was entitled “Insight of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE),” the largest professional association in the world dedicated to advancing technological innovation and excellence to facilitate the life of mankind. IEEE and its members inspire the global community through its scientific publications, scientific conferences, drawing specifications and technological standards, and professional and educational activities. The mission of the organization is to promote technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity. Its vision is to be an essential reference for the global technical community and technical professionals everywhere, and to serve as a global basis for technology contributions and technical professionals in improving global technical conditions. The organization has more than 450,000 members in more than 160 countries, over 50 percent of whom are from outside the United States, including more than 117,000 student members, 334 branches in 10 geographical regions worldwide, 2116 specialist technical branches in more than 100 countries, 1481 specialized technical branches for students, and 486 convergence groups which are non-technical subdivisions of more than one department or board. Entities involved in patenting the convergence group are IEEE-USA, Young Professionals, Women in Engineering (WIE), Permanent Members (LM), and Entrepreneurs. IEEE has 39 specialized associations and seven technical councils representing a wide range of technical disciplines.
The organization has the largest and most famous digital library in the world, called IEEExplore®, which is a reference for scientists, researchers, academics and professionals around the world. The library has more than four million scientific documents, with more than eight million downloads every month. It has more than 1300 specifications and active technical standards and more than 500 specifications and standards under development. IEEE publishes approximately 200 specialized scientific journals, transactions, and magazines. It also sponsors more than 1800 conferences in 95 countries around the world, attracting more than 485,000 participants annually. It also has partnerships with more than 1300 global technical and industrial entities, and publishes more than 1500 sessions through the digital library.
The second lecture was entitled “The Activities of IEEE for the Communications Society in Saudi Arabia,” a technical community specialized in communications and information technology and subsystems of Internet and cloud. The Society’s branch in Saudi Arabia is a community composed of various professionals in industry, and private and government sectors of professionals and academics with a common goal to advance ICT technologies. The Telecommunications Association is a non-profit organization working closely with public and private organizations, educational institutions and universities. The objectives of the association are to enhance and provide WISA’s technical and information services to its members in Saudi Arabia, to strengthen the global and regional technical activities in Saudi Arabia, to cooperate with the branches of the Telecommunications Association in other countries in the region to organize joint technical events, and other sister technical communities in Saudi Arabia.
The third lecture, entitled “The Internet of Things and Connected Technologies, Definition and Empowerment,” in which Dr. Abdullah AlMuttiri discussed what the term Internet means and what the accompanying technologies will bring about by enabling and changing the world of electronics and smart communications. The term “Internet of Things” first appeared in 1999 (Kevin Ashton). The Internet is connecting people to each other, but the Internet of Things connects things to each other and connects them to the infrastructure in such a way that these things can capture information, process and take action on behalf of humans. It is estimated that there will be nearly 100 billion devices connected to a total economy of US $ 3.9 trillion to US $ 11.1 trillion by 2025. Consumers are accelerating the acquisition of smart devices due to the potential advantages of Internet products and applications and things because of the benefits and convenient services they receive. However, when these devices send information and receive them in large quantities, there is a huge amount of data gathered in quantities that cannot be handled by small and medium devices, and here comes the term of data is huge, which means analyzing data and extracting the most useful and sendng it to the beneficiary. Massive data is one of the technologies that will enable the Internet of Things to work with high efficiency, a smart new technology. When there is huge data and smart devices that receive and transmit information at high speeds and large quantities, there is a need to provide the appropriate place to save and distribute them as quickly as required to keep pace with the speed of smart devices and processing large data. The technology that will allow this is cloud computing, which will be able to handle the high demands of high-volume data and distribute it efficiently, allowing things to share information more effectively than the intelligence of these devices.
Meanwhile, a webinar on “Building Digital Trust in the Internet of Things Ecosystem” was delivered by Professor Muhammad Khurram Khan, chapter vice chair. The webinar took place online on 25 January 2018. Prof. Muhammad first provided a definition of the consumer trust upon adopting IoT technology. Second, he presented a conceptual model to reflect the influential factors that stimulate consumer trust, so that they willingly adopt, purchase and use IoT products. Furthermore, he highlighted the security requirements to be considered while developing IoT products and applications. Following that, he shed light on ‘five acts’ that could violate the security and privacy of IoT consumers. In addition, the four W’s of privacy to engage consumers with a high-level of satisfaction in adopting IoT products and applications was discussed. Finally, he identified a number of future challenges that need to be resolved in IoT products and services, and some recommendations were also addressed to preserve consumer trust in IoT.
The ComSoc Saudi Arabia Chapter promotes ComSoc activities and values their members and strives to deliver activities on state-of-the-art technologies that are trending nowadays. The chapter has developed a promising plan for their members for 2018 and will work hard to achieve those defined goals. For any inquiries please do not hesitate to contact the chapter chair, Dr. Abdullah Almuttiri, at SaudiArabia_Chapter@comsoc.org.