Keeping Dubai clean

Today the Dubai Municipality Department of Waste is officially going live with the world's first voice portal service to report environment related offenses.

The government department is using voice recognition technology, which has been designed and deployed by Emerging Technologies.

During last year's GITEX Technology Week , Dubai Municipality and Emerging Technologies announced the partnership, and 12 months on the technology is being deployed onto Dubai's streets.

The new bilingual service, based on speaker verification technology from Nuance, automatically confirms the identity of more than 500 of Dubai Municipality's law enforcement officers, which is distinguished by the individual characteristics of their voice enabling speed and convenience in reporting violations.

Law enforcement officers enter the details of the offence via a mobile phone, which is automatically recorded by the voice recognition system without having to rely on traditional human intervention.

The system provides precision in data entry and alerts the offender directly by a system generated sms, which notifies them that they have been reported and issued with an e-ticket/fine.

"It allows  officers to privately dial a direct line while on the move. Using their natural voice, officers can instantly register the violation of various environmental laws," says Abdulhakim Malik, director of the Information Technology Department for Dubai Municipality.

Today's announcement marks the first stage of three to be rolled out by Dubai Municipality. At a later date, the new fine system will be followed by Auto Attendant and interactive voice response services in the second and third phase of the project.

Sassine Mazraani, CEO of Emerging Technologies, says the system is setting new standards in content delivery.

"We have continuously enhanced the bilingual speech recognition, which is now topped up with the voice biometric technology," he says.

The voice engine driving the technology can detect 28 languages and has an extensive dictionary to handle a wide range of dialects in the world, with 16 services over a single IP-based infrastructure.