The coastal management section (CMS) at Dubai Municipality is enhancing its marine data collection and provision network by increasing the number of data collection stations  through new schemes.

The initiatiove is part of the DM's continuous efforts to apply best practices for managing the emirate’s coastline and catering to the coastal professional community and beach users.

'Such an important and strategic role of collecting, compiling and analyzing the valuable asset reflects the scientific approach adopted by CMS to manage the coastal zone,' Alya AbdulRahim, head of CMS, noted.

The data comes handy in understanding the response trends of the coastline amid the rapid changes in Dubai and in forecasting and preparing for mitigation. It also represents the baseline for any prediction studies and sets values for safe and yet economical design output, Alya noted.

“The CMS is preparing to enhance its data collection capabilities qualitatively and quantitatively, by both increasing the number of data collection stations and through new schemes for data collection and analysis,' she noted.

'The data collected by the proposed schemes represent the latest technology in video capturing, current and wave data collection for near-shore and off-shore area, it represents a leap forward in the data collection and provision service provided by the CMS,' Alya said.

The CMS, she noted, had been running an extensive marine data monitoring program since 2002 using a wide range of instruments for land and marine surveys besides the deployment of high-tech marine physical data collection instruments in the near-shore zone along the emirate’s coastline and Dubai Creek.

The rejuvenated website, (www.dubaicoast.ae), represents an open channel to communicate with the coastal professional community as well as the beach users.

'Beach users can find camera and video images for the beach continuously updated every 30 minutes as well as the latest 24 hour values and charts of temperature, tide, wind, wave, and current conditions.'

She added that the data provided for the professional firms and waterfront developers are extensive historical marine data files for wind, waves, current, tide, cross-shore profiles, seabed depth maps, sediment classification, water temperature and other types of marine data.-TradeArabia News Service