Ensuring public safety in an era of rapid growth and uncertainty has become a defining challenge for governments across the Middle East, reports PwC.
Populations are rising, tourism continues to expand and cities are becoming more complex, interconnected and ambitious in their aspirations to be global leaders in innovation and future readiness. Alongside this growth, the region faces an evolving and increasingly sophisticated security threat landscape.
These dynamics have significantly elevated expectations around public safety, national resilience and the ability of governments and major organisations to protect people, infrastructure and economic continuity.
In this context, modern command centres have become essential pillars of resilience and operational excellence. They now sit at the heart of public safety operations and mission critical environments across government agencies and multinational private sector organisations.
No longer simple monitoring rooms, they have evolved into integrated decision-making environments supporting proactive incident detection, coordinated multiagency response and minimal disruption to business as usual operations.
An industry-first platform
As cities grow in scale and ambition, the ability to rapidly interpret information, collaborate across sectors and anticipate emerging risks will increasingly define national readiness and public confidence. PwC recently supported a national public safety agency and a regional maritime operator, both facing similar operational challenges.
Each relied on a complex mix of proprietary and closed systems that could not integrate with third-party platforms, limiting situational awareness across domains. Incident triage remained heavily manual, slowing response times and contributing to operator fatigue.
Working with multidisciplinary teams and executive stakeholders, PwC developed clear operating models, designed workflows that automated routine tasks and supported the introduction of advanced technologies to enhance situational awareness.
Human-centred design principles were embedded to improve ergonomics, reduce cognitive burden and create environments that promote sustained, high-quality decision making.
The impact was significant: Improved clarity for operators, faster response, stronger collaboration and a more resilient overall operating environment. This work demonstrated how fit for purpose design, combined with deep stakeholder engagement and human centric approaches, can elevate the effectiveness of mission critical command and control centres.
With this regional momentum, PwC launched the Middle East Command Centre Management Summit 2025 in Dubai an industry-first platform designed for leaders to help examine practical dialogue on how integrated command and operational coordination centres must continue to evolve in line with the region’s ambitions.
The summit was formally opened by Sharang Gupta, Partner and Leader of PwC’s Public Safety practice, who highlighted the pace of transformation across the region and the critical need for modernised, intelligence-led operating models.
The event brought together executive physical security and command centre leaders from government, policing, aviation, transport, financial services, giga projects and municipal operations.
While these organisations operate in different contexts, many are navigating similar priorities around resilience, interoperability and workforce readiness, making shared learning and alignment increasingly valuable.
Throughout the day, Justin Vaughan, Director within PwC’s Public Safety practice, provided insights drawn from PwC’s regional and global work, emphasising the importance of advanced operating models, human-centred design and the progression toward cognitive capabilities. His insights helped frame dialogue around what the next generation readiness should look like for the Middle East.
The summit also featured interactive sessions where delegates were able to collaborate collectively, and exchange ideas. These workshops encouraged participants to think beyond traditional models, exploring how interoperability, cognitive workflows and a focus on operator wellbeing can shape a more resilient operating ecosystem.
The aim in bringing this community together was to accelerate capability development, strengthen professional networks and foster a shared vision for the future of command centres, supporting the region’s ongoing efforts to build safe, resilient, future-ready cities.
A major contribution came from global command centre expert Chris Dreyfus-Gibson, who outlined the forces shaping the direction of command centre evolution. He emphasised the rise of cognitive control rooms, where AI, real-time analytics and automated recommendations enhance situational awareness and support faster, more confident decision-making.
He also reinforced the importance of cross-agency orchestration, explaining that effective integration depends on shared intent, clear governance and unified workflows – rather than shared systems or co-located teams.
Operator wellbeing and cognitive design formed another core theme. As operational complexity increases, greater attention is being placed on designing environments that reduce cognitive load, promote focus and consistently support high-quality decision-making.
The discussions at the summit reinforced the value of collective learning, highlighting the role of leadership in sustaining momentum through practical, cross-organisational collaboration.
Themes explored also reflect a broader regional transformation; governments and major organisations are investing heavily in digital infrastructure, advanced AI enabled analytics and technologies that genuinely push the boundaries of what modern command centres can achieve.
With this comes the imperative to move beyond legacy models and build intelligence-driven environments capable of managing complex, multi-domain operations.
Several priorities will shape future development. Strengthening governance will ensure clarity around responsibility and escalation. Building unified operations across agencies will support coordinated responses to incidents spanning public safety, transport, utilities and digital infrastructure.
Human-centred design aligned with ISO 11064 must remain central to ensure environments reduce cognitive strain, enhance wellbeing and enable operators to perform at their best. Embedding predictive intelligence into operations will allow agencies to intervene earlier, automate tasks and enable operators to focus on critical decisions during high pressure events.
As the region expands and welcomes greater numbers of residents and visitors, resilient, well-coordinated operations will become increasingly important. Agencies modernising now will be best positioned to meet future demands.
Shaping the future of public safety
With the success of the inaugural Middle East Command Centre Summit and strong engagement from across the industry, PwC remains committed to advancing mission-critical capability across the region.
Through continued collaboration with global experts such as Chris Dreyfus-Gibson – and through our extensive regional work – we will support agencies in designing and delivering modern, intelligence-led command and control environments that enhance public safety and national resilience.
Our aim is clear: To shape the future of public safety in the Middle East by helping organisations create next generation command centres that protect communities, strengthen operational readiness and support the region’s long term ambitions. PwC has played a leading role as it works to help strengthen command and control capabilities across the Middle East to meet operational demands.
This work spans public safety agencies, maritime operators, transport authorities, aviation organisations and large scale infrastructure programs.
Across these environments, we consistently observe similar operational challenges. Fragmented systems make it difficult to form a unified situational picture. Control room operators are often overwhelmed by the sheer volume and velocity of information.
Agencies also struggle to coordinate major incidents that require analysing extensive datasets and working with multiple internal and interagency stakeholders, leading to delayed response and operational inefficiencies.
To address these challenges, PwC applies a strategic approach informed by international best practice and deep industry expertise. Our design philosophy begins with establishing a robust and well-defined operating model, an explicit statement of the services a command centre must deliver.
This becomes the foundation for shaping the spatial requirements, human factors and technology stack that enable those services. When aligned effectively, these elements create interoperable, operator-centred command centres capable of supporting intelligence driven operations.
