193 and each ministry to see its strengths and weaknesses so investments can be made in the right places to improve quality of life for all residents. “We launched our Geo-Stat geostatistical initiative in 2018,” said Marwa Elkabbany, the GIS expert with FCSC. “We started by collecting detailed facilities datasets from ministries, like health and education facilities, and geoenabling statistics to map more than 70 national indicators.” Setting Goals and Meeting Objectives The discovery of oil in the 1950s fueled growth in the UAE, displacing pearls, fishing, and agriculture as key industries. Two decades ago, almost all the country’s economy was oil based. Now oil makes up less than 30 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). A series of plans have guided national investments away from oil dependency. His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the third president of UAE, spoke in 2015 about this effort and the steady focus toward a future without oil. “In 50 years, when we might have the last barrel of oil, the question is, when it is shipped abroad, will we be sad?” he asked. “If we are investing today in the right sectors, I can tell you we will celebrate.” UAE has diversified with investments in infrastructure, hospitality and tourism, and technology. There are three sovereign wealth funds in UAE that invest on behalf of the government, including Abu Dhabi Investment Authority with assets of nearly $700 billion. This strategy of investment outside of oil aims to provide long-term returns from this nonrenewable resource. Many of the investments are tied to both revenue diversification and improvements in quality of life, including the goal of being a destination for world-class health care, which illustrates how statistics drive societal advancements. First, the UAE needed to know the health of its people, and then it needed to compile details on health-care facilities. “We started the UAE Facilities Catalog by collecting the health facilities datasets along with the indicators such as how many are publicly owned, how many beds they have, and the number of medical staff and physicians,” Elkabbany said. “We mapped it to feed our geostatistical platform, then we overlaid facilities with our population and administrative maps to understand and evaluate their geographic distribution.” Building a Modern Map FCSC has been mandated by the Ministry of Cabinet Affairs to collect data from federal government entities in a seamless manner, including location data where applicable, while fostering best practices regarding data quality and standards. The 1Map name and branding by FCSC matches the country’s data integration goal, which fits the capabilities of modern GIS to tackle challenges across sectors. The FCSC team came a long way from 2020 to 2023. It started by developing national foundational administrative maps for districts and subdistrict levels in addition to defining national urban areas. The process included setting national standards and data harmonization tasks to produce an up-todate, authoritative geodatabase. Sustainability As part of the 50th anniversary mapping project, FCSC mapped the cumulative foreign aid that UAE provided, which can be explored across time, country by country.
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