Drones are attracting increasing attention worldwide. Their applications is several domains, including surveillance, healthcare, and transport are fueling large scale competition between companies to offer services which are until now unavailable, very costly, and/or prohibited due to existing legislations. Statistics are showing that the drone market values, in 2016, in billion US dollars, in the sectors of infrastructure, agriculture, transport, security, media and entertainment, insurance, telecommunication, and mining are 45.2, 32.4, 13.0, 10.5, 8.8, 6.8, 6.3, and 4.3 respectively.

The need for drone technologies in Oman and the Gulf area is definitively increasing. We expect these technologies to be available in the region, for governmental use, in a near future. More drone-based services are then expected to be available for the business and private sectors in the following years. We, therefore, believe that serious and deep discussions between the public, business, social, and academic sectors are very important to investigate the opportunities and challenges of drones in the specific context of Oman. We also believe that it is wise to prepare to ride the wave of oncoming drone technologies, which would drastically reshape the concept of mobility and offer smarter services in a wide range of fields.

In order to discuss the drone technologies and its related innovations, services, legislations, trends, and challenges, we are bringing together experts from the government, business, social, and academic sectors to share their knowledge, opinions, and expectations.