Search

Abu Dhabi is in the process of urbanizing a group of Islands that surround its northern and eastern coastlines. Al-Lulu, Al-Saadiyat, Al- Maryah, Al-Reem and Yas Islands are all new urban enclaves that were desert islands and marshlands yet, have been developed over the past decade to urban islands that include epic and entertainment centres such as the Abu Dhabi Louvre, Guggenheim Museum, Ferrari World, NYU Abu Dhabi, the Paris Sorbonne Abu Dhabi in addition to iconic and exclusive waterfront residential units. These new islands re-brand the image of the main archipelago of Abu Dhabi that for decades retained a grid street pattern and pragmatic concrete blocks created in the late 1970s. The new urban islands transform Abu Dhabi’s image into a multinational modern Arab city seeking to become part of the global city network. Abu Dhabi’s new urban islands also act as breakwaters that protect the main archipelago’s coastline from erosion resulting from tidal change, because they are designed to include concrete and stone breakwater barriers. This paper represents a cross-disciplinary research between Civil Engineering and Architecture Departments in an attempt to explore the emerging infrastructure and urban expansion of Abu Dhabi from a multi-disciplinary perspective. We also highlight through simulating the effect of breakwaters on wave heights two scenarios for Al-Lulu Island the importance of these new barrier Islands on the urban expansion of Abu Dhabi.

The Abu Dhabi 2030 Vision highlights the importance of Sustainable Design and Green Infrastructure inside the UAE and internationally. Future development plans in Abu Dhabi and Alain developed by the Urban Planning Council-UPC manifest emerging interest in Green Infrastructure and Environmental planning. The development of several landscape projects that integrate water elements such as Jahili Park, Al-Ain Al-Fayada and Sheikh Zayed Desert Learning Centre cement the 2030 vision. In order to understand the future of projects with water canals in Desert Cities it is essential to examine the Alain Oasis and its irrigation system known as falaj, that is similar to historic aqueducts and antecedents in the Islamic world such as Qasr Alhambra in Granada/Spain that also had a complex canalization system. This paper studies emerging projects with water features in Alain, and the water flow system in the falaj canalization system in the Oasis by conducting a hydrologic study to quantify the amounts of water needed to irrigate these green areas and simulate the flow condition in the falaj complex channel system using the 2D-hydrodynamic Finite Element Surface Water Modeling System (FESWMS). This paper aims at giving projection of the amounts of water needed sustainable green infrastructure and will be helpful for the decision makers if they want to repeat this model in the future.

Frequent flooding has been recently observed in the northern part of United Arab Emirates, particularly Ras Al Khaimah region (e.g., 2010, 2011 and 2016 floods). These frequent flood events raised the need for accurate estimates of surface runoff and possibly flooded areas in this region. Flooding is prevalent in this valley-coastal region due to the surrounding mountain stream network, which is characterized by flash floods from high precipitation amounts with high intensities between December and March. Most of the streams in this region have no hydraulic control structures at the outlets to regulate their flows. A hydrologic study was conducted at this urbanized valley-coastal area to identify the flood magnitudes and possible flooded areas using a number of geospatial, hydrologic and hydrodynamic models, namely GIS, HEC-SSP, Win-TR-20 and FESWMS. The study identified the flood magnitudes and possible flooded areas from large floods of return periods vary from 50 to 500-year. FESWMS simulations showed that the flooded area increases for the 500-yr return period compared to the lower ones. The water depth ranges on average from 0.5 to 8.0 m. Due to the natural slope of the simulated coastal area, higher depth was predicted, in general, close to the shoreline, while lower depth was predicted near the mountains.

Dubai’s new channel further enhances the urban-scape of the city offering new waterfront developments, transportation venues and diversified panoramas to the city. This paper performs a study to simulate the flow field in the proposed Dubai artificial channel using a 2D hydrodynamic model. The model predicts the flow depth and velocity in the channel, lagoons and bends. The model predictions show that the velocity is higher in the channel sections compared to the lagoons and bends sections. On the other hand, the water depth is lower in the channel sections compared to the lagoons and bends sections. Nonetheless, the velocities in the channel are within the accepted range that prevents boundary erosion and sediment deposition.

In this study, the 2D Finite Element Surface Water Modeling System (FESWMS) is used to design barb structures to mitigate river bank erosion in a stream reach located on the Raccoon River near Adel, Iowa, USA just upstream of the US Highway Bridge 169. FESWMS is used also to access the barbs effect on the study reach. The model results showed that the proposed barb structures successfully reduced the flow velocity along the outside bank and increased the velocity in the center of the stream, thereby successfully increased the conveyance towards the core of the river. The estimated velocities values along the river-banks where the barbs exist were within the recommended values for channel stability design. Thus, the barb structures were able to reduce the erosion along the bankline.

A model has been developed for the prediction of the density functions of bed-elevation and entrainment and deposition rates of sediment in sand bed streams within the lower regime flow condition. The model incorporates both statistical and deterministic parameters in its form. A total of 46 experimental runs have been carried out in a recirculating tilting flume under the equilibrium flow condition using three grain sizes of uniform gradation to validate the model and estimate its parameters. The model parameters are related to the hydraulic conditions of flow and fluid and sediment properties through dimensional and regression analyses. The study has shown that the density functions of bed elevation and entrainment and deposition rates can be approximated quite satisfactorily with the normal distribution curve. Transformation of the density functions into the standardized normal distribution curve provides a unique pattern for all the experimental runs regardless of the sediment grain size, flow condition, and shapes and dimensions of the bed forms. The developed density functions have been utilized to provide a closure for the probabilistic Exner equation for uniform sediment. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9429(2007)133:8(917) CE Database subject headings: Entrainment; Dunes; Probabilistic models; Bedforms; Sediment deposit.