CGIS announces Qatar Area Referencing System project
The Centre for GIS – Ministry of Municipality
& Urban Planning announced that the QARS project had reached an advanced
stage after installing more than 19,000 new house number plates in zones 51
and 52 in Rayyan Municipality and in zones 34, 35, 37, 40, 43, 66 and 68 in
Doha Municipality and zone 7i in Dhaayen Municipality and zone 71 in Umm
Slam Municipality and currently installation is taking in zones 36 and 42
which are in Doha Municipality.
It should be noted that plates installation is the visible phase of this project which is preceded and followed by several other phases all conducted using unique world-class technologies.
Project background:
Qatar had adopted a property identification system named Qatar Area
Referencing System (QARS) several years ago. It was primarily implemented to
aid in the development of detailed area planning and addressing. The 10
digits number identifying a building was made by combining the zone number,
the street number and the building number. Utilities agencies /companies
like Electricity, Water and Telecommunications were placing their own
identification numbers on buildings for their daily routine activities.
Consequently there was redundancy of work, no uniformity, inconsistency,
less efficiency, wastage of resources, no integration between QARS number
and the other utilities numbers (Figure 1).
Figure (1)
At the same time, the urban areas in Qatar were rapidly expanding and urban planning regulations were changing in order to cope up with the country’s development. The updated urban planning regulations were not being taken into consideration throughout the property issuance process which lead to an inconsistent and confusing property numbers to both government agencies and citizens alike.
The National Committee for the Coordination of Infrastructure Public Services has called upon CGIS's expertise and technical capabilities to review the current policy and system of issuing QARS numbers and the property numbering plates in terms of design and elements. In order to cater for the planning requirements as well as coming up with a geo-coding system, CGIS took up this task and discussed the issue with other concerned agencies in detail to have a common property number in Qatar. After an agreement was reached with agencies, CGIS planned and designed such a system that creates a comprehensive database to serve the requirements of all concerned agencies in Qatar by using GIS to link a QARS number with its geographic location and the numbers from other agencies.
Methodology:
The
methodology followed by CGIS was to start by conducting a field survey of
existing properties zone-by-zone where surveyors collect electricity, water
and QTEL numbers indicating whether the location is a vacant land, a
building under construction or an existing structure and define its type and
main entrance location. This process was started using manual paper
recording and currently, CGIS is switching to using Differential
GPS-equipped hand held devices running mapping software and taking advantage
of the new GNSS network established for sub-meter accuracy in locating
building entrance.
The next step in the project's methodology is transferring collected data to a point feature layer that was created in Qatar's Topographic Geo-database. An office team issues a new building number based on field survey data and according to the reference guide CGIS had compiled for issuing numbers in accordance with the updated planning regulations. The location of QARS point is moved to the most suitable spot for the number plate to be fixed according to survey team's comments this process is conducted by an office team at CGIS using GIS tools.
Figure (2)
After issuing new numbers and linking them with other utilities numbers, another office team conducts quality checking procedures in order to guarantee accuracy of data entered and position of QARS point. Figure 3 show a screen capture of after data had been entered and quality checked.
Figure (3)
The other important element in this project is the house number plate itself. CGIS team designed a new plate that shows the street number and the zone number in addition to the property number. The dimensions of the old plates were maintained with clear readability of property number. Anodized Aluminum covered with 3M reflective vinyl is used to manufacture the new plates that are embedded with an UHF RFID tag in the plate’s frame (Figure 4).
Figure (4)
Authorized personnel can wirelessly fetch QARS, Electricity, Water, QTEL and PIN numbers through PDAs equipped with a custom made software that CGIS had developed with several display and reporting capabilities.
Project Results and Future Potential:
The project had already created a great deal of enthusiasm and potential
for a wide range of practical applications in Qatar. Applications that will
take advantage of the wealth of information resulting from the QARS project
include municipalities, water, electricity, drainage, telecommunications,
emergency, census, education, postal and delivery services. (Figure 5).
Figure (5)
CGIS had developed an intranet application that makes the results of this project available through GISnet to all agencies. This application is being tailor customized and enhanced to cater for specific requirements from those agencies (Figure 6). Also, CGIS's web mapping application "Explore Qatar" now supports for searching property numbers of both new and old (existing) numbers and CGIS is calling upon all organization and companies who obtained data having the old property numbers to approach CGIS to receive the new property numbers data so their services wouldn't be disturbed as a result of having inaccurate data.
Figure (6)
As for buildings that are completed during or after the project is finished, HE the Minister of Municipality & Urban Planning issued a requisite to all municipalities to send CGIS a monthly report of building completion certificates so new numbers will be issued and new plates installed for those buildings.
Building number plates installation is expected to be completed within 12 to 18 months then the next stage of numbering and installing plates for internal units whether they are apartments, offices or shops will start. Details of the this stage will be announced in due time.
CGIS is calling upon all citizens and residents to cooperate with the installation teams and assist in controlling the rare cases of vandalism since this project aims at providing better services to everybody in the first place. For more information, please call one of the following numbers: 4955575, 4955574, 4955208.
Ministry of Municipality & Urban Planning
The Centre for GIS
State of Qatar
P.O. Box 22088
Doha - Qatar
Telephone: 974-4955112
Fax: 974-4955011