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Aerial mapping of Dubai sites complete

Dubai has announced completing the “official” versions of a high-quality aerial map of the emirate and a 360-degree Panorama Project of its historic sites, parks and tourist hotspots.

A first in the region, the “virtual” projects — similar to Google Earth, Bing Maps and sites offering 360-degree panoramic views of specific places — are executed by the Dubai Municipality’s Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Department and will help the authorities in updating database, planning and site inspections as well as generate more tourist interest.

An image from the ‘360 degree Historical Building Panorama’ in Dubai.

Director of the GIS Department Abdul Hakim Malik said that the launch of these projects is aimed to provide integrated geographic information of the emirate and enable everyone to benefit from them in various fields.

The Dubai Map project is an aerial photography project acquiring high-quality colour digital aerial images and orthoimagery of Dubai with a total area of 5189sq km, including Hatta. Malik said the digital aerial images have a high resolution and high accuracy of 15cm and 45cm acquired from one of the latest UltraCam cameras from Vexcel Imaging.

It means the resolution is so high that every image in an urban area can be zoomed to a 15cmx15cm level while the desert land and remote areas can be zoomed at 45cmx45cm, explained a GIS expert from the municipality.

Digital true orthophotos for the urban area with 1,319sq km are available for the first time with the GIS Department. In orthophoto mapping, the expert said, the height of the buildings will be corrected for their geographic coordinates so that they will not look slopped. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation of a location. “Orthophotos come with geographic coordinates for every image. This will provide a basis for site inspections and hopefully help in reducing their frequency of inspections. It has got different uses in updating database and planning as well. This map will be of interest to the tourists also,” he told Khaleej Times.

Malik said the 360-degree Panorama Project involved taking pictures using a device made of synchronised cameras equipped with special lens mounted on a GPS-enabled car’s roof or on a tripod as in the case of ‘Historical Building Panorama’ project for the Architectural and Heritage Department.

These images are stitched together and processed later using special software to form a complete 360 by 180 degree view for different locations of the emirate.

“Once stitched, the resulting geo-referenced images give the possibility to visit different locations virtually without the need for videotaping or site visiting,” said Malik.

“Secondary streets and public parks are also covered instead of covering main streets only,” he explained. The project will be published soon on Dubai Municipality website www.dm.gov.ae.

“The experiment was created entirely by our GIS cadres without any type of external expertise or services, and is also the first of its kind not only at the state level, but the entire region, with an estimated total cost of Dh178,000 including the cost of the car used for capturing (the images),” the official added.— sajila@khaleejtimes.com