I’ve been to several Map MIddle East conferences previously in Dubai and had always found many of the presentations worthwhile. There are always good speakers including invariably Vanessa Lawrence of the Ordnance Survey, who was here this year as well.
But this year was quite a refreshing change. First of all the conference was held in Abu Dhabi, instead of Dubai. Abu Dhabi, while pretty much a construction site, though not quite at the frenetic pace of Dubai, is quite an attractive spot, especially the corniche, which runs for kilometers and is being turned into a green park extending along the water front. Secondly, the conference included a symposium dedicated to Geospatial for Design and Construction, which was moderated by Mark Reichardt, President and CEO of the the Open Geospatial Consortium. 
The symposium included fifteen speakers, including Eng. Nazek Al Sabbagh, Managing Director, TRAKHEES, whose opening remarks “that the slowest to change are the people who will benefit most” set the stage for a discussion of a diverse set of topics all related to geospatial and the design and construction industry.
The symposium included fifteen speakers, including Eng. Nazek Al Sabbagh, Managing Director, TRAKHEES, whose opening remarks “that the slowest to change are the people who will benefit most” set the stage for a discussion of a diverse set of topics all related to geospatial and the design and construction industry. Oivind Rooth, Deputy Director General, National Office for Building Technology and Administration, who talked about using web services to provide access to relevant geospatial data required for building permit submissions. Their long term objective, which I expect to be widely emulated around the world is to integrate BIM and GIS based on the buildingSMART standards so that architects, and engineers and costruction firms will be able to make submissions which will include BIM models in electronic form. This will contribute to the ability of city governments to create and maintain current and reliable models of their built environments.
Mario Seneviratne, of Green Technologies, Dubai, discussed LEED certification in general, but included a discussion of the first LEED certified buildings outside of North America, and the first in the Middle East.
One of the most interesting presentations from a design and construction perspective was by Neil Gyte, Atkins Global, one of the world’s leading engineering and design consultancies, who talked about Atkins Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI), which is designed to provide a foundation for CAD/GIS/BIM integration. Their long term objective is enable carbon critical design in the context of a digital city.
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