INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Software for Business
POWERED BY
SAS provides data insights
to Special Olympics World
Games in Abu Dhabi
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T
he largest sports and humanitarian
event on the planet this year, the
Special Olympics World Games Abu
Dhabi 2019, has celebrated inclusion and
the empowerment of disabled people
through the power of sport in line with the
Special Olympics global movement.
With volumes of data being generated in
real time from multiple sources throughout
the games, this event curated valuable data
for not only operational planning purposes
but potentially also utilisable for medical
research into behavioural insights to drive
inclusiveness within society.
With this mission of data driven innovation
on offer, the Local Organizing Committee
(LOC) of the Special Olympics World Games
Abu Dhabi 2019 partnered with SAS,
naming it as the official analytics supplier of
the event.
From March 14 to 21, over 7,500 athletes
and 3,000 coaches represented more than
190 nations, and participated in 24 officially
sanctioned Olympic-style sports in world-
class venues throughout Abu Dhabi.
A signing ceremony for the Memorandum
of Understanding (MoU) between the two
parties took place at SAS Middle East’s office
in Dubai and was signed by Peter Wheeler,
CEO, Special Olympics World Games Abu
Dhabi 2019, and Alaa Yousef, Managing
Director, SAS Middle East. Through this
partnership, the Local Organizing Committee
(LOC) of the Special Olympics World Games
Abu Dhabi 2019 utilised a cutting-edge data
analytics platform from SAS for the purpose
of usage pre, post and during the event.
SAS is a proud partner globally for the Data
for Good movement, which encourages
using data in meaningful ways to solve
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INTELLIGENTCIO
A MoU was signed by Peter Wheeler, CEO,
Special Olympics World Games Abu Dhabi
2019, and Alaa Yousef, Managing Director,
SAS Middle East
humanitarian issues around poverty, health,
human rights and education, and the Special
Olympics movement and its data share the
same ethos.
As the Official Analytics Supplier for the
Special Olympics 2019, SAS not only offered
its Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning
and data management platform to analyse
traditional and non-traditional data sources
like athlete and spectator geospatial data,
health data, spectator and volunteer data,
but a globally sourced team of volunteer
data scientists and data enthusiasts
provided support to drive intelligent event
insights as well.
Peter Wheeler, CEO, Special Olympics World
Games Abu Dhabi 2019, said: “The World
Games in Abu Dhabi marked the start of the
next 50 years of Special Olympics, and so
we wanted to ensure that these games were
innovative and technologically advanced.
“Leveraging the latest data-gathering
methods to monitor our athletes and other
constituents enables us not only to deliver
excellence at the World Games, but also
creates a legacy of valuable data that will
help to redefine the future of the Special
Olympics movement. We are grateful to SAS
for partnering with us in this effort.”
Alaa Yousef, Managing Director, SAS Middle
East, said: “Inclusion is about offering
the same opportunities to everyone, and
providing encouragement and services to
accommodate people’s differences. At SAS
we are passionate about this cause. While
some people look at data and see numbers,
we see numbers and see faces and an
opportunity to drive change. This partnership
with Special Olympics Local Organizing
Committee Abu Dhabi also reflects our
commitment to support such path breaking
initiatives encouraged by the visionary
leadership of the UAE Government.” n
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