H.H. Sheikh Hamad bin Mohammed Al Sharqi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Fujairah, has issued orders to establish the Fujairah Centre for Geographic Information Systems (GIS) with Fujairah as its headquarters, as per Law No. 3 of 2017.

The centre will be the sole official source in the Emirate of Fujairah for geographical and area information for administrations and departments in Fujairah, integrated with the Fujairah Municipality and Dibba Municipality, as well as the Works and Agriculture departments and the Fujairah Statistics Centre.

The centre will collect geographic data and information of the emirate, in co-operation with various local departments, authorities and public institutions, persons, and companies working in the emirate. It will be responsible for protecting, maintaining and categorising this data and information, and responsible for placing technical regulations on the data and information.

The centre will provide the information digital and paper format to any governmental authority that wants to benefit from it, such as corrected aerial pictures, satellite pictures, 3D digital model, topographic and geodetic information, urban planning information, building legislations, titling information, as well as data on roads, sewage, irrigation, electricity, water networks, phone lines, and allied services, among others.

The law specified the centre’s specialities in Clause 5 as follows: - Establishing, operating and maintaining high-speed optic fibre network (GISnet), connecting it to the geographic databases in the country, and securing its data.

- Providing geographic maps for civilian use, for governmental authorities in the emirate and the services related to it, in co-ordination with the authorities concerned.

- Participating in the strategic and operational planning for information technology.

- Preparing the plans for training of the technical and administrative manpower needed to work in the field of information technology.

- Determining the technical qualifications and standards required for hardware information, applications and innovation tools, and unifying their use.

- Determining the information required, their applications and priorities in the interim development and execution.

- Designing, developing and executing information systems.

- Evaluating the centre’s need for technological apparatus and tools to meet the demands of the information systems.

- Evaluating and assessing the centre’s needs for technical and administrative manpower to work in the information systems field.

- Providing technical support and consultation, and co-ordination with various authorities to raise awareness and help users of the information systems.

- Operating the devices and tools of the information systems in the centre and ensure follow-ups for their maintenance.

- Preparing the budget estimates to meet the hardware, manpower, networks and programmes needs of the information systems.