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Dubai gets own fog monitoring stations

DUBAI - Motorists in Dubai can now be alerted of foggy conditions six hours in advance to prevent road accidents due to poor visibility.

The Dubai Municipality on Tuesday launched 14 fog monitoring stations that use the highly advanced “Visibility Modelling and Forecasting System” that is modelled after the one in Slovakia.

Developed by the Survey Department of the civic body, the system’s fog forecasting model provides advance warning of high likelihood of fog on eight major traffic routes in Dubai.

The data from the roadside stations is supplemented by meteorological data from five coastal stations and one station off the coast of Jumeirah.

These stations give live updates of temperature, relative humidity, rainfall, water level, wind direction and wind speed in different areas, thus helping surface traffic safety in the sea as well.

Director-General of the Dubai Municipality Hussain Nasser Lootah and Dubai Police Chief Lieutenant-General Dhahi Khalfan Tamim officially inaugurated one of the monitoring stations located off Emirates Road in Al Warqa’a on Tuesday. All data collected through the sensors in the stations is stored in a central database and a separate server uses this data as inputs to continually run a fog forecasting model named PAFOG.

Officials said the live data from the monitoring stations will be sent via SMS and e-mail alerts to the operations centres of the Dubai Police and Coast Guards, enabling them to put warnings to drivers through digital signboards and radio messages. The warnings will also help the police and road traffic authorities to make road diversions in foggy areas. Director of the Survey Department Mohammed Mahmood Mashroom said the project was initiated after the horrific Ghantoot accident in 2008 in which a pile-up of over 150 vehicles on the Abu Dhabi-Dubai highway resulted in the death of four people and injuries to hundreds. In 2010, another accident due to poor visibility claimed the life of one person and injured 40 others in Jebel Ali. Several other minor accidents also have been reported on foggy days.

“We want to avoid such accidents due to fog and poor visibility. That is why we took up this project that will help the police to issue early alerts on low visibility conditions,” said Mashroom.

Project coordinator Sachin Kumar Chauhan said the team from the Survey Department visited Slovakia and adopted the main features of the very successful fog monitoring system there.

“Data is collected from various sources, including global forecasts, satellite images of the region, airport meteorological services in Dubai and the Dubai Municipality Survey department’s own stations. So we are in a position to know live data of fog developed internally and that coming from the nearby countries towards this direction.”

He said the new system can predict foggy conditions six hours in advance.

“There will be two types of alerts that will go to the police. When the visibility is below 500 metres, which is alarming, and when it is below 100 metres, which is dangerous,” said Chauhan. “We are also working on a website that can give live updates to the public soon.”

sajila@khaleejtimes.com