Progress of IoT Research Technologies and Applications Serving Hajj and Umrah

The term IoT technology is associated with many fields, including scientific, commercial, industrial, health, transportation and other fields, which became a necessity of daily life across all segments of society. Artificial intelligence, the Internet of things, data science and big data are among the most prominent fields of technologies in the modern era of e-knowledge, which are increasingly being relied on in many areas of our life. This research is considered very special and urgent affecting around 20% of the humanities, i.e., Muslim people, whom try to be selected to perform Islamic rituals every year. Given this importance of applying and adapting technologies to serve Hajj and Umrah performers, it is necessary to conduct an analytical study for the technologies and their applications that have been applied in the Hajj and Umrah system. The surveyed studies have been classified, according to their targeted services (focus area), into four main branches, including studies of the two holy mosques and the holy sites, studies of the pre-arrival visitors, housing and services studies, and transportation and crowd management studies. The classified studies were analyzed according to research field, research instrument, statistical method, nature of statistical data, data collection tools, and research citations. The paper outcome opens novel research practical directions selected based on holistic overview of the current technologies analytical survey, which is essential to be considered to improve Hajj and Umrah services coping with today’s technology, in addition to discussing other open issues that need further deep research.