Municipality Develops Integrated System to Classify Dubai Assets in a Comprehensive Geospatial Dictionary

The GIS Center in Dubai Municipality has developed an integrated system for classifying Dubai assets in a comprehensive geospatial dictionary.

The move comes within the framework of the directives of His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of the Executive Council, to transform the Government of Dubai into a fully smart model and make Dubai the address of smart cities in the world.

It is also in implementation of the GIS Center’s tasks related to collecting the emirate’s basic and detailed geographic data and digital information, including descriptive ones, classifying this data and information, setting technical controls with the asset owners, and then providing geographical data, information and a dictionary to it within the limits of agreements and memoranda of understanding concluded between the center and the owners of these assets, data and information.

Dawoud Al Hajri, Director General of Dubai Municipality, said:

'Categorizing Dubai's assets in a comprehensive geospatial dictionary is one of the initiatives implemented by the GIS Center in Dubai Municipality from 2018 onwards. It aims to develop the traditional image of base maps to include all assets created on the ground in a 3D digital twin manner that includes all government assets with a fixed spatial dimension, whether they are above or below the ground, as in the case of infrastructure and service lines, where the location of the asset represents a basic dimension of the value of the asset.”

Al Hajri said the assets were classified in an electronic geospatial dictionary with images that serve the requirements of Dubai government in terms of listing them in a unified geospatial database of government assets, which represents a real wealth estimated at billions of dirhams for the emirate, to simplify access to it, and geospatially analyzing and managing it with the latest available geospatial methods.

Eng. Maryam Al Muhairi, Director of GIS Center, said:

'The system for classifying Dubai asset in a comprehensive geospatial dictionary goes through many stages. The first stage is the unification of asset classification standards, through which the standards for classifying assets are unified in the comprehensive basemap with a focus on the geographical aspect to list the data of fixed-location assets, including infrastructure assets of Dubai Municipality and other entities, in coordination with the departments concerned with GIS in each asset-owning authority.”

“The second stage is to build a comprehensive geospatial database for assets and then update the comprehensive basemap database model with a focus on assets by geographical aspect and categorizing them according to global standards for data in support of the sustainable development goals of the United Nations, which is called UN-GGIM (UN Global Geospatial Information Management), with the possibility of linking them to various electronic systems and applications for asset management,” she said.

“The third stage is to collect the asset locations and information that are unavailable. Through the initiative, a field survey was conducted to collect and confirm the spatial accuracy of the Municipality’s assets, followed by the assets of other parties, using all available means for field work, whether traditional or modern, using drones and geospatial photography car of the center,” added Al Muhairi.

The fourth stage is the development of the electronic geospatial dictionary of assets, as the comprehensive geospatial dictionary is an integral part of the integrated system for classifying Dubai assets in a geospatial dictionary that contains samples for each element of the basic map features and other geographical data available at the GIS Center with an illustration of each type of elements,” she explained.

“The dictionary is designed in full compatibility with the data model on the schema of the geodatabase of the basemap and government assets and is updated upon any change in the schema of the geodatabase. The dictionary is designed to allow new feature types to be added, edited, and deleted from the dictionary when the geodatabase schema is changed, since the application is based on the geodatabase ,” added Al Muhairi.

“The fifth stage is the electronic components of the geospatial dictionary of assets, which in turn is divided into the display browser: It is the browser through which the assets created in the dictionary are displayed, which have been indexed in a way that makes it easier for the user to access the required information when it is included in a data set list, and then the items within each list (Feature), then the detailed data accompanying each item (Attributes),” she added.

Al Muhairi said the system contains a search engine that helps the user to access any item or detailed data available within the center and available automatically in the system.

The Update App is the application through which the new or existing assets in the dictionary are updated. It is used by the geospatial dictionary staff, to add, modify or delete any detailed stage of the data in addition to the accompanying images according to the modification in the geospatial database.

Dubai's assets and its dictionary are displayed through the 'Dubai Here' system, which was developed by the GIS Center as a comprehensive portal for displaying and analyzing the geospatial statistics data, the most important of which is asset data, in an easy way, smooth classification and an easy-to-use search engine to access data.

The assets in the 'Dubai Here' system are displayed in detail according to their owner, and the assets that are currently available as data included in the dictionary. The system was designed to add any other assets in the future.

Classifying Dubai’s assets in a comprehensive geospatial dictionary, plays an essential role in listing Dubai’s assets geospatially and gives an added value to the assets, as knowing the types of assets and their locations represents an important dimension in how to manage them. It also simplifies the asset assessment operations of various entities in the event of modification, change or establishment of new projects that must be removed or modified while studying the feasibility of the related projects.

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