EUI Wins EGP 3 Million Grant from STDF for "Maestro Egypt"

Egypt University of Informatics has won a grant of 3 million Egyptian pounds from the Science, Technology and Innovation Funding Authority (STDF) for its research project "MAESTRO-Egypt," described as Egypt's first smart planning engine for developing the traffic system. The project is meant to support the state's efforts to improve life across old and new cities and urban communities throughout the country.

Prof. Ahmed Hamad, Acting President of the university, said the research reflects the university's commitment to helping find modern solutions to problems facing society by applying Fifth Industrial Revolution technologies, particularly artificial intelligence. He noted that Egypt faces a complex traffic crisis, especially in major cities and governorates like Greater Cairo and Alexandria, as well as on key traffic corridors such as the North Coast, Ain Sokhna, and Suez roads, which impose heavy economic and human costs on society. He added that the academic community has taken a strong interest in this issue and has proposed many smart solutions, noting that numerous state administrative bodies are involved in the traffic problem—including the ministries of transport, housing, planning, finance, and environment, along with local authorities—and that the work of other government entities and companies laying utility networks (electricity, telecom, water, sanitation, and gas) often overlaps with road and traffic corridor performance, requiring a higher degree of coordination among government agencies to improve efficiency and decision-making.

He further explained that the problem is compounded by the growing challenges Egyptian cities face in urban mobility due to rapid population growth, reflected in traffic congestion, rising pollutant emissions, and increasing road accident rates—all of which require effective planning for passenger and freight transport systems, alongside attention to other aspects of traffic networks. This is exactly what the MAESTRO-Egypt research project addresses, using artificial intelligence for urban and transport planning while developing a smart system that integrates simulation with urban planning to help improve road and transport networks, with a focus on proposing economical, realistic solutions suited to the Egyptian environment.

Prof. Hoda Mokhtar, Dean of the Faculty of Computing and Information Sciences at the university and a member of the MAESTRO-Egypt research team, said that most current urban planning tools rely on specialists in transport and traffic route design between city neighborhoods, but the routes and transport systems they design often lack integrated vision and ease of use, which slows down the planning cycle and makes it difficult to evaluate proposed scenarios, particularly those related to public transport, active mobility, and traffic flow. She added that in response to these complexities, the MAESTRO-Egypt project aims to develop Egypt's first smart, multi-agent planning engine for urban mobility, built on artificial intelligence combined with integrated human interaction—enabling officials responsible for transport and road networks across various bodies, including local authorities, as well as engineers, researchers, and other stakeholders, to design, analyze, and improve current and future mobility scenarios.

Regarding the project's goals, she said they include supporting Egypt's strategies for transitioning to smart cities, improving the efficiency of road and transport systems, reducing traffic congestion and emissions, and building a comprehensive urban mobility database compliant with Egyptian standards—directly contributing to data-driven urban planning and improving quality of life in Egyptian cities, one of the goals of Egypt's Vision 2030.

Dr. Mohamed Taher El-Refai, an AI instructor at the Faculty of Computing and Information Sciences and director of the research project, explained that MAESTRO-Egypt's work will not be limited to road development alone but will also include developing and setting plans for public transport networks and introducing new transport systems or updating existing ones in order to shorten citizens' travel distances. For this reason, the project will offer urban planning recommendations such as creating or modifying road routes or new expansions and lanes. He added that the research project also calculates the economic cost of each proposal it makes, helping strike a balance between a proposal's economic cost and its actual impact on improving the road and transport network—especially since the project integrates simulation systems with traditional planning and development systems, with simulations based on actual Egyptian driving patterns, including certain non-ideal driving behaviors such as failure to stay within traffic lanes and speeding, ensuring these errors and behaviors are accounted for in the proposed solutions.

Dr. Nariman Adel, a faculty instructor and member of the research team, said the team is currently studying solutions to the problem of traffic congestion on certain roads and corridors, including the possibility of restricting some areas to pedestrians only, and studying the effect of this on traffic in surrounding neighborhoods and the network as a whole, as well as proposing graduated solutions to resolve congestion—whether by adding an extra traffic lane, a bridge, or a tunnel—along with a cost evaluation for each proposal.