Features
The Dubai Municipality initially undertook a three-month monitoring campaign of the Dubai Jumeirah coastline in 1997 and thereafter instituted a limited beach survey and wave recording programme for four years until 2001. A comprehensive continuous coastal zone monitoring programme (Phase 1) was launched in 2002, ending in December 2006. Features of the monitoring programme included:
- regular topographic and bathymetric surveys,
- remote video monitoring of Dubai beaches,
- sediment sampling and analysis,
- nearshore directional wave and current recordings and
- intensive measurement exercises at selected locations using ADCP equipment.
A hydrographic lidar survey of the entire Dubai coastal and offshore zones was also carried out in October 2004.
The Dubai coastal zone was divided into logical areas to facilitate the monitoring operations. These areas covered the whole of the nearshore open coastline as well as the Dubai Creek and Al Mamzar lagoon. The major ports of Hamriya, Rashid and Jebel Ali were not included within the monitoring areas. Similarly, the major offshore developments such as the Palms and the World projects were not directly included (as they did not exist at the time) in phase 1 of the monitoring programme, but their effects on the Dubai coastline and nearshore wave climate have been measured.