Abu Dhabi

Evidence-based decision-making in Abu Dhabi cultural sector is increasingly being influenced by the development of data generation from a coordinated statistical system. The Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi has increased its support of this focus by funding new research instruments, including CultureSTATS-AD project. One of the meth-odological challenges of CultureSTATS-AD project consists in articulation of the locally anchored and the internationally comparable dimensions of the evolving culture statistics system. The present paper addresses this methodological challenge by adopting a pragmatic approach to Abu Dhabi culture vocabulary. The practical usages of culture definitions by policymakers, academics and culture professionals replicate a myriad of underlying social processes. We suggest a transversal contextual analysis of Abu Dhabi culture documentation in order to understand in what conceptual, legal and social contexts each of the currently used culture definitions is inserted. Next, we propose to develop the culture indicators that emphasize these contexts. Finally, the paper offers methodological approaches to selection, definition and data population of culture indicators in Abu Dhabi. Even though our approach does not pretend to be exhaustive, it allows identifying the first linchpins of culture indicator building in Abu Dhabi and permits further alignment with the international standards.

Municipal solid waste generation is a rapidly increasing challenge that is leading to severe pollution and environmental degradation in many urban areas of developing countries. Globally, the solid waste sector accounts for 18% of methane emissions and 3e4% of greenhouse gas emissions overall. Waste handling and disposal systems in most large cities have largely been designed with minimal accounting of environmental issues. This study presents the Waste to Energy Recovery Assessment (WERA) framework, a new quantitative decision support model for initial evaluation and alternative comparisons of different thermochemical treatments of municipal wastes. The framework not only accounts for benefits through electricity generation but also accounts for emissions from facilities and the associated social cost of carbon in a cost-benefit assessment. The assessments are conducted with Monte Carlo simulations that explicitly account for uncertain factors such as future composition and generation of solid waste, technical efficiency of treatment processes, capital and operating costs, as well as future policies. The framework is used to study waste-to-energy (WtE) systems for Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Tokyo and New York. The results show that WtE systems can fulfill only 1.4e3.6% of 2014 electricity demand in the analyzed cases. Furthermore, the net present value for different technologies can be positive if collection fees and electricity rates (potentially set through feed-in-tariff policies) are sufficiently high. The analysis for Abu Dhabi and Riyadh also reveals that in a limited set of conditions (of technology efficiencies, and waste collection rates etc.) the WtE facilities can be self-sustaining investments.

A new fossil vertebrate site dating to the late Miocene yielding bird remains was recently discovered at Ruwais in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The fossils from the new locality come from the Baynunah Formation which is largely composed of fluvial deposits. The bird remains from Ruwais and other late Miocene localities with Baynunah Formation deposits are here described. The taxa and material represented are Struthioformidae eggshell, and Anhinga sp. and Ardeidae postcranial skeletal material. The presence of a modern genus in the Miocene has prompted a discussion here of the maximum age of modern genera in the fossil record, which in many cases appears to be Neogene. The latter can in turn lead to the identification of modern species because a past member of a modern genus falls within the size range of a modern species.

In recent years, the world has seen the emergence of a number of urban projects which, under the banner of experimentation, have promoted alternative models of city-making capable, in theory, of creating sustainable built environments. Among these supposedly experimental models, the smart city and the eco-city stand out in terms of geographical diffusion, and are hailed by their advocates as the mark of an innovative urbanism based on a scientific approach to urban development. Through the analysis of Hong Kong and Masdar City, examples of a smart-city agenda and an eco-city project respectively, this paper questions the sustainability of so-called smart cities and eco-cities, by investigating the extent to which they are developed in a controlled and systematic manner as their developers claim. More specifically, the paper counterclaims mainstream understandings of smart and ecological urbanism, arguing that what are promoted as cohesive settlements shaped by a homogeneous vision of the sustainable city, are actually fragmented cities made of disconnected and often incongruous pieces of urban fabric. Theoretically, these claims are discussed through the concept of Frankenstein urbanism which draws upon Mary Shelley's novel as a metaphor for unsuccessful experiments generated by the forced union of different, incompatible elements.

This chapter explores the notion and practice of the smart city, with a geographical focus on Abu Dhabi, the capital city of the United Arab Emirates. Smart-city projects are understood and discussed as the products of overarching political economies whose objectives are pursued through a fast-track urbanisation. The case of Abu Dhabi shows that smart-city initiatives are connected to the state's goals of changing its economic base and preserving the political status quo, through the development and commercialization of smart-clean technology. In this sense, the smart city, as a living laboratory meant to produce new cleantech products, such as smart grids and state-of-the-art solar power stations, becomes the physical locus where new strands of the regional economy are cultivated. Through the example of Masdar City, a new high-tech district under construction in Abu Dhabi, the chapter unpacks and critiques the contradictions between the economic imperatives that underpin so-called smart interventions and their overall sustainability, revealing that, as in most cases of ecological modernisation, socio-environmental concerns are overshadowed by business interests. We conclude that, in addition to being ineffective against the majority of the social and the environmental problems caused by cities, by supporting transnational capitalist machines of production and consumption, smart-city solutions risk to backfire and exacerbate the same vicious circle that they should be breaking.

This Migrant Labor in the Gulf Summary Report details the research findings that were presented by the Migrant Labor in the Gulf working group participants during their meetings in Doha, Qatar. CIRS launched the initiative in 2008 and held a total of three meetings. The working group is composed of experts in the field of migrant labor who hail from a variety of academic disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, economics, and political science. The working group is also composed of the CIRS research grant recipients: Andrew Gardner from the University of Puget Sound, Arland Thornton, Mansoor Moaddel, Dirgha Ghimirie, Linda Young-DeMarco, and Nathalie Williams from the University of Michigan, Susan Martin from Georgetown University, Mary Breeding from the World Bank, and David Mednicoff from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. The edited volume, titled Migrant Labour in the Persian Gulf was published by Columbia University Press/Hurst in 2012.

This book chapter is an early version of Cugurullo 2018. Although similar in nature, this chapter explores aspects of experimental urbanism, such as the decomposition of the urban fabric of eco-city projects, which are not discussed in its later incarnation in Environment and Planning A.

ZADCO owns more than 500 wells operating in UZ, UA & ST fields to contribute in achieving the production targets as set by the Shareholders. To ensure that wells operate as designed for their assigned life (or greater) with all risks kept as low as reasonably ...

For those who come to the United Arab Emirates, staying in luxurious air-conditioned hotels and visiting ultra-modern shopping malls, the country appears an enigma, a glass and concrete fabrication that seems to have sprung from the desert overnight. Keepers of the Golden Shore looks behind the glossy facade, tracing the history of the region from its beginnings in nomadic tribes to the affluent society of today, casting a new and revealing light on a much-misunderstood land. On 2 December 1971, the United Arab Emirates was born; Great Britain signed a Treaty of Friendship marking the end of its presence in the region.

Many thought it was doomed to fail, and yet nothing can be taken for granted in this land of mirages and hidden treasures. Across the spread of its deserts, mountains, islands and seas, the UAE has a rich and diverse history. From ancient people who emerged from the desert to settle there, through many invasions and wars, the myths of piracy and the mystique of pearls, to the arrival of oilmen drilling beneath the dunes in the stifling heat, Keepers of the Golden Shore tells the extraordinary story of how the Emirates evolved from an impoverished tribal society to become one of the richest countries on Earth today.

Available in the UK from Reaktion Books: http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/display.asp?ISB=9781780235806

and in the USA from Chicago University Press: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/K/bo23422877.html

The purpose of this study is to determine the strategic management and the healthcare sector in Abu Dhabi (SEHA) from the theoretical perspective. Although an empirical research is a way of gaining knowledge by means of direct and indirect observation or experience, however, this research will add on the understandings from the view of theoretical review as well. To execute that, a number of theories put forward, upon which the theoretical framework is premised; these are: the theoretical model of strategic planning in healthcare organizations, strategy content in strategic planning model (SPM), environment(s) in strategic planning model, mission in strategic planning model, human resources management (HRM) in strategic planning model etc. The theoretical review revealed that the available limited research lacks validation through empirical research. This has brought about new knowledge to the researchers which may be tested or contested due to country conditions being different to that of Abu Dhabi or laps of time has altered the findings as of a future date. Future researchers could identify emerging variables that may alter the significance of variables tested which may lead to completely new discoveries as to what contributes to the success of healthcare.

The development of projects for new eco-cities is rapidly becoming a global phenomenon. Alleged eco-cities are being built across a variety of spaces via processes of urbanisation triggering substantial environmental, social and economic impacts. This article investigates how new eco-city projects interpret and practice urban sustainability by focusing on the policy context that underpins their development. The article argues that projects for new eco-cities are shaped in loci by policy agendas tailored around specific economic and political targets. In these terms, the ideas and strategies of urban sustainability adopted by eco-city developers are understood as reflections of broader policy priorities. The case study employed in this article, Masdar City, reveals how the Emirati eco-city initiative is the product of local agendas seeking economic growth via urbanisation to preserve the political institutions of Abu Dhabi. Following the economic imperatives set by the ruling class, the Masdar City project interprets sustainability as ecological modernisation and practices urban environmentalism almost exclusively in economic terms. The article shows how the developers of Masdar City capitalise on sustainability by building an urban platform to develop and commercialise clean-tech products, and concludes that the Emirati alleged eco-city is an example of urban eco-modernisation: a high-tech urban development informed by market analysis rather than ecological studies.

Conventional building methods are continuing to stress the supply of available resources, including water, energy and materials, causing harm to the environment. In order to tackle these problems the building industry needs to embrace sustainable development methods and policies. One of the main approaches used to define and give solutions to these problems is adopting the relatively newly founded buildings and communities certification systems. As these certification systems are tremendously growing, it is important to continually examine their effectiveness, development path and results.
The objective of the proposition is to better understand the impacts, opportunities and challenges of the use of any certification system, by showcasing “Estidama”, Abu Dhabi’s certification system, addressing the local environment, social, economic and culture aspects. This is assisted by a local case study “Masdar City”, presenting two levels of study, the building and community scales. The research methods include examining available literature, as well as on site Interviews with clients, designers, engineering consultants, environmental consultants, project managers, contractors, facility managers, building information modeling experts, municipal officials, credits assessors, policy writers and government representatives, in an attempt to represent the collaborative effort from all parties involved in any project.
The interview results, as well as specific credits analyzed helped accomplishing the aim of sensitizing stakeholders and regulatory bodies about the benefits and deficiencies of rating systems. Furthermore a development of recommendations formulated in form of strategies and an action plan are presented, to aid enhancing new and existing certification procedures.

Keywords:
Architecture Sustainable Transportation Sustainable Development Environmental Planning and Design Urban Planning Sustainable Building Design Sustainable Urban Environments Sustainable Water Resources Management Sustainable Energy Green architecture Environmental Sustainability Sustainable Architecture Sustainable Design Green Building LEED Certification Thesis Master's Thesis Abu Dhabi Resource efficiency Building Energy Certificates BREEAM Zero-energy buildings Masdar City Green Building Certification Estidama Abu Dhabi Education Council Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council Urban Planning Council

Cultural heritage was a major factor in the formation of politics and identity for nation-states. Yet in Europe, a gradual overcoming of old nationalism has paved the way for its postmodern iteration, where it is interwoven with tourism, the market, leisure, and entertainment. As such, monuments,
museums, and archaeological sites have become important elements to thematize tourism and consumption.
Over the past decades, some rich Middle East countries—including the United Arab Emirates—have adopted a similar
use of heritage: it has been used to build or reinvent national identity, and to promote recreational and tourist activities.
Dubai and Abu Dhabi are two significant cases. Their intangible heritage helps to build local identity and to attract tourism, together with the cities’ luxurious hotels and their ultra-modern shopping malls. Moreover, city administrations
have even invited some major Western museums to open local branches, to increase tourism and confirm their new
status as global cities.

Among Jacques Cousteau's many expeditions, his expedition to the Arabian Gulf stands alone. At first glance, the choice of Cousteau to lead an oil survey—he was neither a geologist nor a geophysicist—seems a curious one. Undersea techniques were still evolving, and his divers struggled to extract rock samples from the seabed. Perhaps the survey was not as significant as he later claimed, only a colourful footnote in the oil history of the region—how exactly should we view Jacques Cousteau and his expedition to the Arabian Gulf?

This article examines a neglected aspect of the region’s oil history, the early exploration of the Abu Dhabi offshore concession. Referring to published accounts and primary sources, including material from the BP Archive at Warwick University, the author outlines the development of oil exploration in the region, charts the progress of Cousteau’s survey and assesses its place in the discovery of oil in the lower Arabian Gulf.

Wilfred Thesiger (1910–2003) was one of the most famous explorers of the Arabian Peninsula. In the latter half of the 1940s, he twice crossed the great Arabian desert, the Rub al-Khali (“Empty Quarter”), and explored inner Oman. These camel-borne expeditions were undertaken in conditions of great hardship and even danger. He was also renowned for his aversion to oil companies, which he feared would undermine the bedouin way of life. His views were outlined in his own writings, primarily his book, Arabian Sands, in which he predicted that the bedouin would abandon their traditional lifestyle to earn their living working in the oil camps. Thesiger’s travels encroached on a volatile tribal situation in central Oman and conflicted with the aims of the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) to open up the region to oil exploration. This article considers the interaction between explorers of the desert and explorers for oil. At its heart lies a dilemma facing all explorers of uncharted lands: how to record and preserve the traditional ways of indigenous people without contributing to the forces of change that threaten their existence. In the end, Thesiger was forced to decide between abandoning his travels or compromising his ideals by seeking financial help from IPC. Subsequently, rapid oil development came to south-eastern Arabia with discoveries in Abu Dhabi and Oman, transforming traditional lifestyles and leaving Thesiger in later life to reflect on the changes that the new wealth had brought.

While the Great Recession and ensuing “Arab Spring” have taken a heavy toll on many nations in North Africa and the Middle East, yielding unprecedented volatility in country risk metrics, GCC member-states, with the exception of Bahrain, seemed relatively immune to economic decline. But the 2014 Saudi-Qatari Rift, which can be interpreted as a fight between the world’s leading oil and natural gas producers, could have deeper and longer lasting consequences than previous crises....

This report is intended to provide a conceptual understanding of the hydrogeologic system within the Abu Dhabi Emirate and the ADM, and the general characteristics of the aquifers
and aquitard units therein. This report also provides details on the local hydrogeologic system components that might contribute to ground instability, cavity collapse, and/or damage to buildings and infrastructure as a result of construction processes, particularly excavation dewatering.

This essay was written for the book Gulf Labor: High Culture /Hard Labor (OR books, 2015, Andrew Ross editor). It offers a brief historical sketch of artists who, in response to external, political events, chose to abandon their studio practice in order to engage in direct actions, cultural boycotts, strikes and other militant tactics. One aim of the text is to situate the activity of Gulf Labor Coalition and G.U.L.F. within a genealogy of committed art, suggesting that there is a definite continuity between present and past politicized artistic practices. But the conclusion is also made that something new is also underway in so far as the once robust cultural politics of the cold war era have now become just politics, plain and simple. And artists, who once earnestly sought to identify with workers in the 1930s and 1960s, have in fact become, despite their creative virtuosity, just one more precarious worker amongst others.

The sector paper presented here provides a synthesis of knowledge concerning the cultural heritage resources of Abu Dhabi Emirate. Descriptions of the key components, main chronological periods represented and key management issues are provided. The report also details the cultural, scientific, educational and economic value of cultural heritage to Abu Dhabi Emirate. Major issues discussed include legislation and infrastructure, the struggle for a balance between development vs. protection and management, and the importance of education and awareness. This work forms part of a suite of sector papers intended to contribute to the State of the Environment Report as part of the activities of the Abu Dhabi Global Environment Data Initiative (AGEDI).

This qualitative study examines an era in the history of English education in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) by investigating the perspectives of English offered by 16 female Emirati pre-service teachers. As important stakeholders of education reform, these Emirati women are on the cusp of a linguistic transformation: They are learning in English while preparing to use English as a medium of instruction in classrooms of their own. Within an Arabian context characterized by dynamic change, conceptions of English and how it should be used in relation to Arabic have, undoubtedly, shifted in status and focus. This study explores the complex and diverse ways English is conceptualized and used by Emirati pre-service teachers during a particular phase of educational reforms shaped by expectations of bi-literacy in English and Arabic. This study has two main research questions. They are: 1) What are Emirati pre-service teachers’ conceptions of English in light of its use as a medium of instruction? 2) What are the social influences mediating their conceptions of English? This study, conceptualized as an unfolding, exploratory study, draws on ethnographic methods across three phases of data collection: focus group discussions, participant observations and ethnographic interviews. It also relies on theoretical assumptions about the role of language in the construction of knowledge across diffferent phases of learning, as set by Berger and Luckman (1971).

The findings shared in this study shed light on the meanings Emirati pre-service teachers have of English in light of its use as a medium of instruction and the social influences mediating their conceptions. The study offers two main contributions to the field. The first includes a range of ways that English and Arabic are used, modified and incorporated into the participants’ linguistic repertoires, showing that the use of EMI reflects several discrete types of conversational practices. The second contribution highlights awareness of a rich linguistic backdrop. In Abu Dhabi, English and Arabic constitute foregrounded roles in a diverse and multilingual capital city where other languages are experienced and ranked in social importance. The findings conclude that English is more than a resource serving pragmatic purposes and creative impulses, English is also a feature of Abu Dhabi as a social space. The themes shared in this study are intended to promote clarity of the sociolinguistic dynamics of a particular sub-group of Emirati pre-service teachers and their understandings of the use of English as a medium of instruction in higher education and stimulate discussion about the ways in which English is integrated into daily life on this peninsula in the Arabian Gulf.

‘Country risk’ is essentially about assessing the economic prospects of a nation holistically, within the broader legal and geopolitical soil without which institutional investors cannot grow their assets. The government of Qatar is now paying an incommensurate price for having thought it could defy forever the laws of geo-economic gravity.

In 2006 Abu Dhabi launched an ambitious project to construct the world’s first zero-carbon city: Masdar City. In Spaceship in the Desert Gökçe Günel examines the development and construction of Masdar City's renewable energy and clean technology infrastructures, providing an illuminating portrait of an international group of engineers, designers, and students who attempted to build a post-oil future in Abu Dhabi. While many of Masdar's initiatives—such as developing a new energy currency and a driverless rapid transit network—have stalled or not met expectations, Günel analyzes how these initiatives contributed to rendering the future a thinly disguised version of the fossil-fueled present. Spaceship in the Desert tells the story of Masdar, at once a “utopia” sponsored by the Emirati government, and a well-resourced company involving different actors who participated in the project, each with their own agendas and desires.

The objective of the paper is to draw a sketch of UAE’s population and migration dynamics, using the scarce data available from the federal and emirate-level statistical bureaus. In 2010, expatriates in the UAE were estimated to number 7,316,073 persons, twenty times the 1975’s figure of 356,343. Foreign nationals thus made up 88.5 per cent of the country’s total population; most were believed to come from Asia and especially from India. In the employed population, foreign nationals accounted for an even larger share (96 per cent of the Dubai’s employed population in 2011). Non-Emiratis comprised 40 per cent of the UAE’s public sector’s workforce in 2013, but as much as 99.5 per cent of those employed in the private sector. Unlike in other GCC states, a quarter of working expatriates were in managerial posts, employed across all activities’ spectrum. Expatriates’ demographic expansion mounted during the 2000s, a period of spectacular economic growth fuelled by soaring oil prices. Since 2008’s financial downturn, however, the economy recovered and the hiring of foreign workers has resumed, stimulated by large-scale projects such as Dubai’s Expo 2020. Nonetheless, reforms in immigration policies are now undertaken, fuelled by security concerns and pressures from human rights’ protection bodies. The reality of some expatriates’ settlement is also witnessed in numbers (expatriate children aged 0-14 outnumbered Emirati
children already in 2005), while mixed marriages are acknowledged in policies: some naturalisations of children of Emirati mothers have been performed since 2011.

The year 1953 marked the start of offshore exploration in the Lower Gulf when the sheikh of Abu Dhabi, Shakhbut bin Sultan Al Nahyan, granted a concession to D'Arcy Exploration. A succession of surveys resulted in the discovery of the Umm Shaif offshore field in 1958. This article traces the events leading to that discovery, and the subsequent development of the Abu Dhabi marine area, which includes one of the largest offshore fields in the world.

Recent forays by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and newspapers into the construction sites of Saadiyat Island reveal the troubling magnitude of New York University Abu Dhabi's non-compliance with standards of labor. With an eye to these reports, I conduct ethnographic research to study the experiences of another subgroup of workers on Saadiyat Island: NYUAD's security guards. I examine the practical and voiced realities of their everyday lives, from where they live to stories of their hometowns, concluding my study with two main findings. First, security guards at NYUAD are educated and trained service-sector employees. Second, they show an acute sense of the transnational circuit of labor and profit in which they move. I argue, then, that generalizations surrounding the realities of migrant workers, though perhaps well-intentioned, efface the nuance of class differences within this broadly descriptive category.