Assist. Prof. Dr. Areej Khairy al-Rawi, a lecturer from the Center for Urban and Regional Planning for Postgraduate Studies at the University of Baghdad, has participated in in a symposium organized by the Iraqi Engineers Syndicate under the auspices of the Federation of Arab Engineers, entitled (Engineering a Sustainable and Safe Roads). The seminar aimed to improve the road network in Arab cities, determine load standards for internal and external roads, as well as achieve sustainability requirements in roads, after discussing 16 papers from various Arab countries.
Dr. Areej al-Rawi delivered a research paper entitled “Transport Planning Policies in Smart Cities: Global Experiences”, in which she highlighted the most important transport planning policies in several global cities in order to identify them, addressing the possibility of their application in Arab cities in general and the Iraqi cities in particular, after studying the possibilities and determinants of each city as a whole and evaluating them from all economic, administrative, environmental, urban and social aspects so as to fulfill the standards of sustainability. The themes of the symposium discussed road safety and sustainable development goals, engineering procedures adopted in transport sustainability, as well as other engineering measures related to improving road safety.
The study also presented some recommendations that focused on the need to evaluate internal and external roads, and the extent to which they conform to planning and engineering standards, and then develop special standards for loads on roads, after adding such sustainability standards in the planning and design of roads, in addition to adding smart city standards in transport planning in Arab cities in particular. It is worth mentioning that the seminar was attended by the Secretary-General of the Federation of Arab Engineers, Dr. Adel al-Hadithi, the Chairman of the Transport Committee Ahmed Salman, as well as the Captain of the Iraqi Engineers Syndicate Mr. Zulfiqar al-Maksousi and a number of attendees.