Abstract

Geo-Referencing Base for the Emirates of Abu Dhabi


Dr. Abdulla Hassan Ghareeb Al Bloushi
Executive Director - Property Management
Department of Municipal Affairs
Abu Dhabi, UAE


Abu Dhabi Emirate has pioneered efforts in building SDI to facilitate inter-governmental Geospatial resource sharing. With this initiative called AD-SDI (Abu Dhabi Spatial Data Infrastructure), each AD-SDI Community Member now has the responsibility to make its data and services available in a format such that it can be easily consumed by other AD-SDI Community Members. Department of Municipal Affairs (DMA) is the custodian of Base Mapping Data that provides the geo-referencing base for AD-SDI.

DMA is developing Municipal Spatial Solutions Infrastructure (MSSI) to make consolidated spatial data and services available to end-users of municipalities and to AD-SDI Community Members. Currently Geospatial data is independently captured and maintained by Abu Dhabi Municipality, Al Ain Municipality and Western Region Municipality for their respective regions. Each municipality has different internal processes, datasets and spatial technologies. Implementation of MSSI will provide standardized and seamless access to this data for all of DMA’s stakeholders while providing a reasonable level of independence to the three Municipalities in their processes to collect, store, manage and update their geospatial data.

Traditionally, government bodies around the world have spent a lot of resources in collecting and maintaining geospatial data. Many local and national level organizations of these countries have made this data freely available to a large variety of stakeholders through initiatives such as Spatial Data Infrastructure. However, in many cases, this data has not been utilised to its full potential due to lack of solutions (applications) that are built around these rich datasets. MMSI will not only deliver data but also deliver end-user applications to solve real business problems. This will increase real value of the investment in Geospatial data and infrastructure, and promote wider adoption among all of DMA’s stakeholders. The paper will describe DMA’s geospatial initiatives and highlight MSSI goals and concepts.