SPEAKER BIO
Andrew Rippon
Smart City Director
Royal Commission for AlUla
Andrew Rippon is the Smart City Director at the Royal Commission for AlUla in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. His role is to support of AlUla’s ambitious cultural tourism, sustainability and economic diversification agenda with Smart policies, processes and technologies. He is also driving the S
Smart City Director
Royal Commission for AlUla
Andrew Rippon is the Smart City Director at the Royal Commission for AlUla in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. His role is to support of AlUla’s ambitious cultural tourism, sustainability and economic diversification agenda with Smart policies, processes and technologies. He is also driving the Smart and Sustainable mobility conversion of all the Commission’s vehicles and the mobility as a service strategy.
Previously Andrew consulted the European Commission as Governance and Design Authority on the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure and for four years he was principal Consultant on Smart Cities in Dubai. There he wrote important sections of the Smart City strategies of the governments of Dubai and Saudi Arabia, including the Smart City Technology Blueprints in both countries and the Smart District Guidelines in Dubai.
Andrew’s background has always been in digital transformation initiatives since starting work on internet projects in the early 1990s. Later working with internet services for telecoms Vodafone Global, STC, Zain and Etisalat, including collaborating on the early Smart City strategy at the latter in 2014.