Building on Water: The Use of Satellite Images to Track Urban Changes and Hydrodynamic Models to Simulate Flow Patterns Around Artificial Islands

Abstract

Dubai’s interest to attract investors through exclusive urban enclaves is best exemplified by the artificial islands that reshaped much of its shoreline. Several artificial islands such as Palm Jumeirah, Palm Jebel Ali and the World Islands reinforce the trend of fostering extensive urban development along shorelines. Creating artificial islands is not only limited to Dubai a much larger scale artificial island “Forest City” is emerging in Johor Bahru on the southern tip of Malaysia fronting Singapore. Forest City advocates a multi-layered city built on reclaimed land to offer luxury homes with vertical gardens to wealthy investors. This paper juxtaposes the use of satellite images to track urban changes in these emerging artificial islands and 2D-hydrodynamic models to simulate the flow patterns around the Palm Jumeirah as an example.