Envisioning a Comprehensive Earth Information System for Improving Water Resource Assessment in the UAE

Abstract

Rapid population growth, combined with an expanding economy and tourist industry has lead to a water resource crisis in the United Arab Emirates. The water crisis includes serious difficulties in meeting basic needs, particularly in the agricultural sector, which is a dominating water consumer in the country. All economic sectors are finding it increasingly difficult meeting their water needs, which is primarily manifested by the natural scarcity of water recourses, depletion of groundwater, low efficiency of water use and low coverage of water and sanitation services. This dissertation presents a vision for a comprehensive Earth Information System that goes beyond the limited collection of, say, meteorological data, but seeks to create a national database of past, present and future data of the many related earth system components of both natural and human origin, all of which play a role in defining the hydrologic cycle, and ultimately, the state of water resources. This system is being motivated by the fact that most of the water resource assessments in the UAE cannot take advantage of such datasets because the data are either not collected, too fragmented, or are not part of a national archive that is accessible to the research community and the general public. This system will be developed at the highest level of the national government, through the Office of His Highness the President and the office of the Department of Water Resource Studies which will seek to provide improved water resource assessment using modern database and analytical methods, that will support the development of better studies and new, modern institutional networks and authorities.