BAHRAIN'S STRATEGIC LOCATION in the Persian Gulf has allowed it to broaden its cultural perspective and increase its prosperity through trade and travel. Known as Dilmun to the ancient Sumerians, this island nation has interacted with a number of cultures throughout its five thousand-year history including the Babylonians, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Persians, Portuguese and British. Today, the kingdom benefits from the immense oil and natural gas fields located throughout the Gulf.
Its economic success and religious and cultural ties to nearby neighbours has inspired the construction of the King Fahd Causeway, linking Bahrain with Saudi Arabia and the Qatar-Bahrain Friendship Bridge, which is currently under construction. However, throughout the world today, and particularly in the Gulf region because of its enormous wealth and pockets of political unrest, the need for increased national security is at an alltime high.
As a result of its proximity to other Gulf countries, the migration of hundreds of thousands of workers through the area, the hundreds of oil tankers and cargo ships that traverse the Persian Gulf each day, and various other factors that can affect its security, the need for increased vigilance is great. Among its many duties, Bahrain’s Ministry of the Interior (MOI) is responsible the country’s homeland security, infrastructure, natural resources, and the maintenance of safe and secure passage in and around the kingdom. In 2006, MOI decided to strengthen its defensive capabilities and expand the use of its existing geographic information system (GIS).
The ministry selected the Geographic Security System (GSS) developed by ESRI Northeast Africa for this major expansion of its use of GIS technology. “This GIS-based national security implementation is the first of its kind in the Gulf region," said Brigadier Basim Al- Hamer of the MOI. "Applying GIS in Public Safety & Law Enforcement systems at the Bahrain MOI will optimise our emergency response efficiency and accuracy.” Sohail El-Abd, professional services general manager at ESRI Northeast Africa, said, “The GSS system is built as a scalable geospatial backbone on which a variety of GIS-based command and control subsystems were developed in a highly integrated manner.”
El-Abd added that implementing ArcGIS Server technology, which uses Service Oriented Architecture [SOA], was critical in completing the extensive integration necessary to implement the GSS. Another important aspect of implementing the project was following the Joint Application Development (JAD) approach, which provided real knowledge transfer to the system users throughout all project phases. The GSS is a comprehensive solution for safety and security built on state-ofthe- art GIS technology. It is composed of a set of suites each of which includes several modules:
■The emergency management suite provides effective emergency response.
■Traffic management monitors traffic flow and control.
■The task force management suite is a comprehensive program that ranges from the initial task planning through fleet monitoring. ■Situational awareness provides a common operational picture.
■Surveillance manages the real-time surveillance cameras positioned throughout the country.
■Mission planning provides support in planning and developing operational drawings.
The coastal surveillance suite provides effective monitoring of Bahrain’s coasts and marine activities through surveillance cameras and/or tracking devices. A crucial element of the GSS is the unified data model that hosts a variety of tabular and spatial data. Build on ArcGIS Server technology, the geodatabase stores hundreds of geospatial layers of data, such as the location of police stations, land use, and incident locations as well as related descriptive information, reports, and charts.
The ArcGIS Server technology provides a means for easy integration and consolidation of disparate data and its Technical Review Middle East - Issue Three 2009 Information Technology 36 The need for increased security in Bahrain is at an all-time high. Jim Baumann explains how the Geographic Security System meets this need A co-ordinated security solution for Bahrain The GSS is a comprehensive solution for safety and security built on state-of-the-art GIS technology
Siemens Energy has secured a US$130mn order to supply gas turbine packages to Saudi Arabia. The components are to be installed in the Hail Extension II and Al Qurayat Expansion II power plants. The purchasers are the Alfanar Construction Company and Saudi Services for Electromechanic Works (SSEM) respectively and they will perform the project on a turnkey basis for the Saudi Electric Company (SEC) utility. Delivery of the components is scheduled for 2010 and 2011.
Power and automation technology group, ABB, has won an order worth US$89mn from the Saudi Electricity Company to build a new substation to ensure reliable power supplies for the King Abdullah Financial District in Riyadh. The substation will be close to the financial centre and feed four smaller substations situated within the district. The project is expected to be completed in around 22 months.
Air blowers using internal compression instead of external compression can set a new standard for energy efficiency in the low-pressure market according to a new technical whitepaper from Atlas Copco’s oil-free air division. The whitepaper explains the differences between screw technology and the traditional ‘Roots’ type lobe technology and says that screw technology, which is used in Atlas Copco's ZS screw blowers, is on average 30 per cent more energy efficient. The manufacturer recently launched its full range of ZS screw blowers that are designed to improve energy efficiency for low-pressure applications and industries such as wastewater treatment and pneumatic conveying.
Plans for the zero-carbon Masdar City project are to be revised, with details of the amended master plan to be announced “imminently” according to Masdar's head of supply-chain management, Richard Reynolds. “We’ll finalise the revised Masdar plan fairly imminently, in the next two to three weeks,” Reynolds was quoted as saying by Bloomberg. “We’d only built part of it, so it made sense to stop and revisit.”
Saudi Arabia has taken the first step towards becoming energy efficient by holding its first ever public stakeholder meeting, the initial step in certifying an energy efficiency project under the rules of the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), in Jeddah recently.
Power generation equipment and services supplier, Alstom, has announced the strengthening of its renewables portfolio through a partnership with BrightSource Energy Inc. Alstom's move into the high-growth solar energy market comes in the form of an investment of up to US$55mn in BrightSource Energy Inc, with an equity stake that positions Alstom as one of the main shareholders in the company. 
A high level delegation representing the energy sector in Dubai has visited China to look at the latest global practices in the area of sustainable energy and the diversification of its sources. The delegation exchanged knowledge on the usage of conventional power plant technologies (using ultra super critical power plant-coal and synthetic gas) to generate electricity and produce desalinated water.
The Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (ADFD), a fund established by the government to aid the economic development of developing nations, has granted a loan to Bahrain worth US$50mn. The loan will be used to erect two electric transmission lines, of 220KV and 66KV each, to meet the increasing demand for electric power.
Abu Dhabi Transmission and Despatch (Transco) has placed an order with Siemens Energy to supply transformer substations and switchgear for the UAE power distribution network expansion project. The US$184mn order includes the turnkey supply of three 132/11 kV transformer substations and two 132/22 kV substations.
Power and automation technology group, ABB, has signed a service contract with the Gulf Cooperation Council Interconnection Authority (GCCIA) to provide maintenance for equipment and systems at the Gulf Interconnection Grid's newly constructed substations. The two-year contract is worth US$8.3mn and will aim to optimise the grid's reliability through regular maintenance and provide technical and emergency assistance when required.
Abu Dhabi is considering a proposal to use solar energy equipment on rooftops in the city to generate about 500MW of power, according to the executive director at the city's Executive Affairs Authority, David Scott.
Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s renewable and alternative energy technologies and solutions initiative, has appointed the bidding consortium of Total and Abengoa Solar as a partner to own, build and operate Shams 1, the world’s largest concentrated solar power plant (CSP). One of Masdar’s flagship projects and the first plant of its kind in the Middle East, Shams 1 will directly contribute towards Abu Dhabi’s target of achieving 7 per cent renewable energy power generation capacity by the year 2020.
Oman has awarded France's GDF Suez a US$1.7 billion contract to build two power plants. A tender board official told Reuters, “GDF Suez has signed a 15-year contract with the government in a BOOT (build, own, operate and transfer) model for which the company will spend 700 million rials."
An executive from state oil company Saudi Aramco has said that renewable sources could account for up to 10 per cent of Saudi Arabia's power output by 2020 with prices coming down and a regulatory framework in place.
ABB, THE LEADING power and automation technology group, has won an order worth US$38mn from the Saudi Electricity Company, Saudi Arabia’s national power transmission and distribution utility, to improve the efficiency of 22 power distribution substations.
THE MIDDLE EAST has the opportunity to become a boom centre for solar energy in the next 10 years, according to AT Kearney.
THE INCANDESCENT LIGHT bulb is disappearing from stores. It has long been superseded by a new generation of light sources. In tomorrow’s multimedia society colour displays the size of an apartment will generate crystal-clear images, and entire sports stadiums will be lit by high-performance lamps.
Technical Review Middle East - Issue Three 2009 Power 60 IN THE PRESENT economic climate the fact that renewable energy can cut pollution levels may not be enough. As Phil Desmond discovers, some recent innovations in the field of cellular communications are being promoted not just as being better for the environment than conventional fuels but better for business too.
ARAMCO’S “FAIR” PRICE of US$75 a barrel has not yet been achieved but the giant Saudi economy is still surging ahead, prioritising the creation of new homes and diversified jobs in industry, social and other services to satisfy the needs of a 26mn young and wealthy population which grows at two per cent-plus every year. This means continued rapid progress on the development of the new Economic Cities, further and accelerated petrochemical and light industrial diversification, and the Middle East’s largest by far programme of dedicated passenger- and freightline rail construction. 
