UAE is getting smart on flooding

April 26, 2018 Sadeem News

UAE – Khalifa City, Ras Alkhaima | Advanced surveillance systems that use artificial intelligence to detect suspicious behaviour and raise the alarm are keeping people safe in the UAE.

This was revealed by Marwan Khoury, marketing manager of Axis Communications ME, who said the UAE was the most mature market in the region for this sort of technology. The company is a major supplier of advanced camera systems.

Acting like an eye for city planners and civil defense, Sadeem technology are able to predict the growth and magnitude of a flood, then alert the concerned stakeholders, which catalyzed the road department in the Ministry of infrastructure development to engage with Sadeem in pilot project as a part of their maintenance and operations tasks.

Everyone from tech companies to national government entities are admitting that a ‘smart city’ is one that fulfills the needs of its people, and holistically creates an environment that achieves greater happiness and ease of living.

In the same vein, the development of major cities requires an infrastructure that can change and advance for the good of the people who live within it.

Floods in GCC

Floods typically occur when rain water has accumulated in wadis and in just minutes they can be in a city, and then made worse by poor infrastructure. The Western and Eastern regions of the Arabian Peninsula are considered in the top of the list for the most risky areas in terms of flooding.

In April 2016, Riyadh was submerged in rainwater. Without a 21st century underground drainage system to divert the flow away from streets and homes, workers attempted to clear flooded roadways with construction equipment. Ultimately, 18 people were killed and 915 people were rescued from their vehicles. Similarly, in November 2013 people went missing after rain flooding in the capital.

Efforts being made to sort it out include the 2012 contract awarded to Saudi-based company Saipem. A $350 million contract to construct a stormwater drainage system to alleviate Jeddah’s historic flash flooding problem. The scheduled timeline was 18 months. Residents wonder where the money disappeared to in the midst of consistent flooding.

A recent publication by Deloitte estimates that the total net value of GCC projects in the pre-execution stage (this is for construction) is just over $2 trillion. (Major sectors of infrastructure that are addressed are water, construction, power, oil, chemical, gas, and transportation).

This is where smart city infrastructure could step in. However, the approach is scattered.

Sadeem in UAE:

In April 2018, Sadeem started engaging with the concerned stakeholders in UAE and installed a project at E311, near Khalifa City just South of Ras Alkhaima in UAE. The main objectives of the project that Sadeem envisions to enable are:

Taking faster and better decisions during rainy incidents to substantially reduce the environmental risks (via warning systems, emergency response allocation and traffic control).
Increasing the public awareness and reaction capabilities towards and road challenges.
Obtaining valuable information to optimize the investments on drainage and road infrastructures in the long term.
Enhancing the active decision making abilities and planning to sustain current infrastructures with information acquired by Sadeem sensor nodes.

Moreover, Dubai has been particularly prolific in its work on making themselves a smart city, perhaps the smartest city of them all – Sheikh Mohammed declared in 2013 that Dubai would be the world’s smartest city by 2018.

Something that is lacking currently is awareness. Awareness of the benefits of prevention over cure – the cost of clear up after a flash flood is expensive – so cities have to spend a lot of time making people aware of the importance of such a solution as theirs. When we consider the catastrophes and damages of two or three of these floods a year, prevention measures would appear to have more value. Therefore solutions like what Sadeem is offering fits directly within the visions and objectives of entities in UAE, to maintain their competitive indices in road quality and road system infrastructure. Moreover, Sadeem is starting to provide federal roads in UAE with environmental units which would enable the continuous monitoring of the air quality at the targeted areas which would in turn emphasis on policy and decision making to ensure quality of living.

``The UAE is a very well established market for us. The government is investing heavily on surveillance, especially city surveillance, and the result is the UAE has become one of the safest countries to work and live in the world.``

Mr Khoury

UAE is getting smart on flooding

Floods in GCC

Sadeem in UAE:

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