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Dubai Municipality organized a virtual seminar under the slogan, “Best GCC Environmental Practices,” as part of its activities to celebrate the GCC Environment Day, in the context of the Gulf countries’ interest in the environment and awareness programs aimed at enhancing the protection of the local environment and natural resources, in addition to seeing what is new, distinctive and that serves the environmental sectors of other departments.

The symposium witnessed the participation of many authorities at the local and GCC levels to learn about the best practices and innovations through which to preserve the environment and reach to the world.

One of the latest innovations and achievements made by Dubai Municipality is the launch of the first environmental satellite for the year 2021, in order to know and study everything related to air quality and climate changes in the Emirate of Dubai and the UAE. The satellite, called DMSat, was launched specifically from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, to be the first nanometric satellite launched by Dubai for environmental purposes, as it was equipped with the latest technologies used in environmental monitoring from space in the world.

It should be noted that the nanometric satellite, DMSat-1 weighs about 15 kilograms, and carries many devices and sensor systems that monitor greenhouse gases, which cause global warming, as well as pollutants and fine particles suspended in the air.

The importance of the environmental satellite launch project is that it is a great and exceptional opportunity that will enable the emirate to build and enhance its research and technical capabilities in the fields of environmental scientific research.

The main objective of launching the satellite is to build a space database for data on air pollutants and greenhouse gases that cause climate changes, in order to use it with the data collected from the network of ground stations available at Dubai Municipality, which consists of 72 stations for monitoring the air environment, in various advanced environmental studies and applications that are implemented to support the preservation of the environmental sectors (air, water and soil) from pollution and depletion, as well as providing the opportunity to exploit the development witnessed by the scope of space technology, to serve the environment.

Among the most important aspirations is that satellite data will be employed to study the impact of land uses, climatic factors and seasonal changes on the spread and concentrations of dust and greenhouse gases that cause global warming, one of the environmental challenges facing many urban areas as a result of urban development and the expansion of industrial and development activities and infrastructure projects, besides the significant increase in the various means of transportation, land, air and sea.