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This chapter delves into the transformative potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in spearheading the smart city vision by 2040 in the Gulf Region. It emphasizes the integration of AI with smart city governance, strategy, and infrastructure, underlining the pivotal role AI plays in digital transformation. The discourse navigates through strategic areas such as the exploitation of Large Language Models for enhancing smart city services, the utilization of AI in analyzing social network content and crowdsourcing applications, and leveraging AI’s reasoning capabilities to bolster predictive analytics and smart city services innovation. The chapter also showcases how AI-driven innovation fosters the development of new markets and industries within the smart city ecosystem. Highlighting the Gulf Region’s strategic investment in human capital and technology, the authors present a vision where smart cities serve as hubs of sustainability, innovation, and economic growth. Through the lens of the Smart City GSUTI Framework, the narrative illustrates the comprehensive integration of governance, strategy, utilization frameworks, technologies, and infrastructural capabilities. This holistic approach ensures that AI not only enhances the quality of life and economic prosperity in the Gulf Region but also positions it as a global leader in smart city development. The chapter is a call to action for leveraging AI’s potential to transform the Gulf Region into a model for sustainable, innovative, and smart urban development by 2040.

This introductory chapter lays the foundation for a Holistic Smart City framework organized around five pillars namely: Smart City Governance – Strategy – Utilization – Technology – Infrastructure (GSUTI) model. Smart cities governance establishes the overarching structure for effective management, emphasizing data integrity, regulatory resilience, and civic engagement. The strategy pillar integrates vision, mission, and strategic initiatives aligned with sustainable development goals, ensuring resource allocation and innovation resilience. The Utilization Framework encompasses diverse domains like transportation, energy, and healthcare, thus prioritizing initiatives and monitoring impact, enabling technologies that drive smart city innovation, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) (Chui et al., 2018), Internet of Things, blockchain, and cybersecurity to enhance efficiency and service delivery. Infrastructures and capabilities encompass physical and data ecosystems, from buildings and transportation hubs to big data streams and social media content. The chapter sets the context for the scientific discussion, offering practical insights into strategic consultation, performance monitoring, technology management, and data governance. It outlines directions for smart city development in the Gulf Region, including bold visions, megaprojects, national-level initiatives, data-driven services, and AI-driven excellence. This holistic framework provides a roadmap for smart city development, fostering sustainability, innovation, and societal well-being across the Gulf Region and beyond.

The evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in higher education marks a paradigm shift, driving significant changes in pedagogical approaches and learning methodologies. With the rise of generative AI and artificial general intelligence (AGI), institutions have witnessed a transformative era where traditional content creation and delivery are being redefined. Start-ups like OpenAI and Anthropic have been at the forefront, offering tools like ChatGPT and Claude-3, which reshape natural language processing and forecast a future where AI integrations are seamless and pervasive. This chapter provides a critical overview of the current AI-driven applications enhancing personalized learning, content generation, and remote learning. Tools such as Mainstay, CourseGenie, and AIDES demonstrate AI's capacity to improve student engagement and success rates, while Degreed and Gnowbe showcase the broadening horizons of AI in skills building and microlearning experiences. Furthermore, platforms like Elicit and Research Rabbit exemplify the transformation in research and academic writing, albeit not without raising ethical concerns. In conclusion, AI's permanence in the educational landscape is unquestionable, calling for strategic frameworks that empower educators and students to harness its benefits effectively. The imminent expansion of the AI tool ecosystem necessitates preparedness for substantial shifts in educational practices, where ethical considerations and value-based strategies become paramount. Higher education institutions must align with this technological momentum, ensuring AI's potential is maximized in an ethical, inclusive, and impactful manner.

The dawn of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in higher education (HE) is not just on the horizon; it's here, promising a transformative leap forward. This shift is not simply about adopting new technologies; it's about redefining educational paradigms to meet specific challenges – from enhancing support and critical thinking to improving outcomes and fostering teamwork. This chapter outlines a comprehensive strategy to integrate AI into HE, spotlighting personalized learning, content generation, and remote learning, among others, as key domains ripe for AI's influence. An effective AI strategy will foster excellence and enable HE institutions to unlock the potential of technology for students and faculty alike. At its core, the proposed AI development strategy targets five critical areas: training, career growth, skill enhancement, learning, and team building. These areas ensure that all HE community members are well-equipped to navigate the AI-enhanced landscape of future jobs and challenges. However, realizing the full benefits of AI transcends the deployment of tools and systems; it requires strategic planning, investment in people, and policy changes. HE must cultivate champions to spearhead this transformation, emphasizing that success is not just measured in output but in the cultivation of socially responsible citizens. To harness AI's full capacity, we must transcend outdated stereotypes and metrics, fostering an educational environment that prepares students for the future. The ultimate goal is not just to integrate AI into HE but to use it as a catalyst for growth, innovation, and a better future for all.

The emergence of smart cities, metropolises that integrate physical infrastructure, digital technology, and data analytics, and that focus on urban sustainability, have profoundly changed urban development. In the modern digital era, robust infrastructure has become an indispensable catalyst for urban advancement. Kuwait is dedicated to the integration of diverse renewable energy technologies in the development of smart cities that enhance energy security, promote innovation, and contribute to global climate change mitigation efforts. Focusing on smart cities within Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, a review is presented of how successfully they have effectively combined technology, infrastructure, and sustainability to serve as models for new global and regional developments. Insights into what makes a city smart are provided in different settings.

Technology and a gig economy have affected how people are employed, with shorter-term, more flexible, and technologically mediated work arrangements increasingly becoming the norm. The digital platform, which acts both as a marketplace and a “shadow employer,” makes this possible, with workers provided with unprecedented autonomy and flexibility. The authors examine the interplay between the gig economy and the concept of the smart city – an urban environment reliant upon information and communication technologies – and focus on how technological integrations such as blockchain, the collective network of connected devices, and the technology that facilitates communication between devices and the cloud, as well as between the devices themselves (Internet of Things [IoT]), and 5G, bolster opportunities for gig workers to carve out an existence in a perpetually changing landscape. Examples are provided for the global giant Amazon and the regional businesses Talabat and Raha in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Application of real-time tracking, precision-driven management, and decentralized transactions, provides gig workers new opportunities for employment in their evolving digital smart-city environment.

In smart cities striving for innovation, development, and prosperity, hydrogen offers a promising path for decarbonization. However, its effective integration into the evolving energy landscape requires understanding regional intricacies and identifying areas for improvement. This chapter examines hydrogen transport from production to utilization, evaluating technologies’ pros, cons, and process equations and using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) as a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) tool to assess these technologies based on multiple criteria. It also explores barriers and opportunities in hydrogen transport within the 21st-century energy transition, providing insights for overcoming challenges. Evaluation criteria for hydrogen transport technologies were ranked by relative importance, with energy efficiency topping the list, followed by energy density, infrastructure requirements, cost, range, and flexibility. Safety, technological maturity, scalability, and compatibility with existing infrastructure received lower weights. Hydrogen transport technologies were categorized into three performance levels: low, medium, and high. Hydrogen tube trailers ranked lowest, while chemical hydrides, hydrail, liquid organic hydrogen carriers, hydrogen pipelines, and hydrogen blending exhibited moderate performance. Compressed hydrogen gas, liquid hydrogen, ammonia carriers, and hydrogen fueling stations demonstrated the highest performance. The proposed framework is crucial for next-gen smart cities, cutting emissions, boosting growth, and speeding up development with a strong hydrogen infrastructure. This makes the region a sustainable tech leader, improving air quality and well-being. Aligned with Gulf Region goals, it is key for smart cities. Policymakers, industries, and researchers can use these insights to overcome barriers and seize hydrogen transport tech opportunities.