DM achieves number of outstanding GIS projects

The Geographic Information Systems Department of Dubai Municipality has achieved a number of significant achievements that contributed in fulfilling the strategic objectives of the civic body and increasing the satisfaction of clients and strategic partners during the year 2012. Eng. Abdul Hakim Malik, Director of GIS Department said that the Dubai Services Map comes on top of these projects as it aims to provide a unified central database system for the entire sewage and irrigation network as well as the rain water drainage through an electronic map for the first time in the emirate of Dubai. ?The project helped to collect and link entire engineering fees from various sources in accordance with the engineering standards in sync with the best international practices, and to correct the data of sewage, irrigation and rainwater drainage with the help of these standards as well as to publish the corrected data on the website'. ?The Dubai Service Corridor Map which provides the data of planned corridors such as service corridors, metro corridors and corridors in the middle and around the roads is considered as a milestone project. All related data are prepared and disseminated electronically to the users. The data of all types of service corridors are connected in the consolidated network aiming at reducing the faults during construction projects'. ?Dubai Soil Map is another important project implemented during 2012. The project is aimed at establishing an electronic map of soil specifications with the help of soil examination in different part of the emirate. Data of various soil types are digitally stored in unified and centralized database helping the department, decision makers and users'. ?DM also executed a Reserve Data Center in Abu Hail aimed at protecting the data from disasters as the department planned to use the maximum of infrastructure in the data center to accommodate the strategic projects like Dubai Lands, Dubai Map, Service Map, Soil Map etc and transferred the old emergency site to the data center outside the DM building to include the GIS services'. ?This project could save total AED 770,000 during the last year with the help of this project reducing amount of leasing, consultancy services and operational costs of systems purchase and maintenance'. ?This is achieved by creating a national coordinate grid on digital map, developing applications and fixing plates that carries location information on all the buildings in Dubai. All types of buildings will be covered like government organizations, hospitals, parks, commercial buildings, houses, factories, warehouses, etc,' Malik said.