Satellite analysis for Dubai & the UAE — land, coast and green cover from space
Dyaan turns free, public satellite and open geospatial data into plain-language answers about any place in the UAE you can draw on a map — Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Ajman and the wider Emirates. No API keys, no invented numbers: every figure is measured from real satellite pixels and can be reproduced in the tool. For a country that has physically rebuilt its coastline and greened stretches of desert within living memory, a measured before-and-after is not a curiosity — it is the clearest record there is.
What you can measure across the UAE
- Coastline & land-reclamation change — how the shoreline, islands and reclaimed land (Palm Jumeirah, the World, waterfront districts) have grown over decades, from the JRC Global Surface Water record.
- Green-cover & park vegetation — NDVI now and over time, to track greening projects, parks and landscaping against the desert baseline.
- Land-cover & construction change — built-up, bare ground and vegetation shares from ESA WorldCover 10 m, to see how a district has developed.
- Water bodies & quality — lakes, lagoons and reservoirs, with chlorophyll and turbidity optical proxies from Sentinel-2.
- Low-lying & flood-prone ground — the terrain where water would collect in extreme rainfall, from the 30 m Copernicus DEM.
- Terrain, elevation & viewshed — height, slope and line-of-sight for planning and site work.
A worked example: Dubai's coastline, redrawn
No place on Earth demonstrates measured land change like the Dubai coast. Point Dyaan at the Palm Jumeirah and the shoreline around it and it reads the JRC water archive from 1984 to 2021, counting where open Gulf became dry land. Our own Dubai coastline field note measures a net 1,046 hectares of surface water converted to land across that window — the reclamation, quantified from satellite pixels rather than a brochure. Inland, the story is the desert city itself: our what-is-Dubai-made-of field note finds 64.7% of the mapped area is bare or sparsely vegetated, the honest baseline against which every park, golf course and greening project is measured. Two readings, both counted, both reproducible.
City by city
Dubai — coastal reclamation, the built-up sprawl advancing into desert, and the greening of parks and golf communities against a bare baseline. Abu Dhabi — mangrove extent along the corniche and islands, and land-cover change on the developing fringes. Sharjah & the northern Emirates — lagoon and creek change, and low-lying ground exposed in the heavy-rain events the region now sees. The method is the same everywhere: draw the area, read the record — so a single development plot and a whole emirate get the same measured treatment.
What you can and cannot see
Honesty is the product. Optical satellites read the surface at 10 m per pixel (Sentinel-2) and the long water archive at 30 m (JRC), so a feature smaller than a few pixels is an indicative flag, not a survey. In a desert climate, bright bare sand and built surfaces can look alike to some indices — Dyaan corroborates land-cover reads across independent datasets rather than trusting one. Chlorophyll and turbidity are calibrated optical proxies, not a lab assay. Every reading carries its date and its limits, and points you to a ground or high-resolution check when one is warranted.
Who it is for
Developers and consultants scoping a site before a survey; sustainability and facilities teams tracking green cover and water; researchers and journalists who need a defensible number; and residents curious how their part of the city has changed.
Questions
Is satellite analysis for Dubai free?
Yes. Dyaan runs on free, keyless public archives — Sentinel-2, JRC Global Surface Water, ESA WorldCover, NASA FIRMS and the Copernicus DEM — so reading any UAE location costs nothing. Only optional high-resolution image downloads are a paid add-on.
Can it show land reclamation over time?
Yes — the JRC record spans 1984–2021, so you can measure exactly how much open water became land along the Dubai coast, in hectares, for any area you draw.
Does it work for Abu Dhabi and Sharjah too?
Yes — and anywhere else. There is no fixed list of cities; you draw any area on the map and Dyaan reads the satellite record for exactly that ground.
Can I export the figures?
Yes — every result table exports to CSV or GeoJSON, and each number traces to a named public dataset. See the methodology.
Analyse a place in the UAE now — free
Read the worked field notes: Dubai's coastline, redrawn · What Dubai is made of · all field notes.