Dubai E-Guide

Dubai Municipality has launched an e-guide for Dubai, which allows Internet users to locate places in the emirate through an Internet browser.

The launch of the new service, which is available at www.gis.gov.ae, comes as part of the e-government programme of the civic body.

Qassim Sultan, Director-General of Dubai Municipality, called the new e-venture a revolution in the Geographical Information Systems (GIS) sector s the service could be availed by all the local departments, government establishments, general public and tourists from any part of the world.

"This will help streamline procedures of a number of government departments with respect to the GIS," Mr. Sultan said, while addressing a Press Conference organized to announce the launch of the e-guide.

The Press Conference was also attended by Hussein Nasser Lootah, Assistant Director-General of the Municipality for Environment and Public Health Affairs and Head of the e-government committee at the civic body, and Mohammed Al Zafin, Director of the GIS Centre, Dubai e-guide is the first official site for locating activities, facilities and services in the emirate of Dubai including landmarks and historical sites.

It is of great help in locating government facilities and utilities with information including addresses and images of major landmarks. Locating places can be done in three ways: Guided Search (by selecting the name of the place), Address Search (by keying in the building number and road number or name in addition to community number or name) and Map Search (by defining an area and then searching within the specified distance).

The Dubai e-guide can also be used for printing maps and measuring distance between places. There is a zoom in and zoom out facility on the site for the maps.

The civic body has made available a feedback form for suggestions for improvements to the facility. Officials said, an Arabic interface will be soon provided in addition to information on the locations of construction sites, traffic information, routing and shortest path for traveling to a particular place, public transport information and general information about business establishments in Dubai emirate.

A number of hyperlinks have been made to make it a comprehensive e-guide. The Dubai e-guide team was headed by Manal Al Shamlan, Head of GIS Development Unit, and consisted of Chris Luken (Photography Specialist), Abdul Muneem Mustafa (GIS Data Administrator), Hanan Bajash (GIS Web Developer), Adeeb AlMadanee (GIS Engineer), Elizier Nelson (GIS Data Technician), Mohammed Mustafa (GID field engineer) and Parappa Totagi (GIS Data Technician).

The GIS Centre was established in January 2001.

The purpose of the GID Centre is to serve all departments inside Dubai Municipality as well as other government organizations and public organizations with GIS related tasks.

The main functions of the GIS Centre are to provide and maintain data for the GIS for the different departments of the Dubai Municipality and the emirate of Dubai.