Planners thrilled with bird's-eye view of Abu Dhabi

ABU DHABI // Thousands of aerial photographs of Abu Dhabi will chart a digital course for urban planners trying to keep pace with the city's rapid development. Camera-mounted aircraft flying over the capital since the start of the year have captured detailed images of 85 per cent of the island in more than 200,000 high-resolution photographs.

The digital images and data would simplify planning by eliminating the need for time-consuming work on foot, "ground-proofing", traditionally used to help decide which areas need roads or public utilities. Police could also use the information for analysing crime patterns. "Before these kinds of techniques, the planners were sending surveyors out to go and do everything on the ground and check it that way," said Yousuf al Marzooqi, the municipality's director of spatial data.

"With all this booming development happening, it's really difficult to use that ordinary type of surveying. With this, you can read the image and understand its locations in a very accurate way." More than 18,500 square km of the capital, up to the boundaries of Al Gharbia, have been recorded in the geographic spatial database. The areas covered included Abu Dhabi Island, Al Raha Beach, Mussafah and Yas Island.

Mr al Marzooqi, who trained as an engineer, expected that all urban areas would be covered by January 2011. The data could then be linked up with GIS (geographical information system) software to add layers of details to the base map that would go beyond anything accessible via Google Earth. "What you see with Google Earth is aerial photography," he said. "What we are reaching for is something in which we can convert the image into an engineering diagram, so you can actually look at a map and measure the area with dimensions available."

The base map might also instantly identify specific types of buildings in any given area, such as schools. "We can put all that building information in the database and start analysing how many schools were registered. This was usually done by the statistics department," he said. "Now you can have the base map and if you're a planner, easily understand that all of this land only has one or two schools. You might say, 'Let's put another school in this area also'."

The municipality is conducting workshops to educate contractors on new procedures for submitting designs and permits so that the data can be included in the base mapping project. This would ensure that the base map, accessible to all government entities, is constantly up to date. Mr al Marzooqi said the next step - to also record information for a base map in Al Gharbia - should be completed by mid-2011.