The Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council (UPC) has launched a pioneering urban development benchmark under its Estidama initiative.

The initiative was unveiled at last month’s Environment 2009, the region’s premier environment trade show, held at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre.
The Estidama integrative design process (EIDP) is designed to ingrain core sustainability practices in the conceptual phases of construction, tourism, educational, civic, commercial, residential and infrastructure projects planned across the emirate, according to UPC general manager Falah Mohammed Al Ahbabi.
EIDP is aimed at changing mindsets whilst embedding basic sustainability principles in development codes and regulations ensuring that every future project in Abu Dhabi achieves higher levels of sustainability through simply meeting the code. EIDP also has its own Pearl design system which is available to those developers seeking to achieve a higher sustainability quality, he said.
The EIDP encompasses all three stages of the lifecycle of a project, from A to Z. It begins with the discovery phase for initial research and analysis of the potential project issues and is followed by the design and construction stage before it concludes with the occupancy, facilities management and performance feedback phase.
Estidama, which means sustainability in Arabic, is an initiative developed by the UPC conceived with the purpose of transforming Abu Dhabi into an internationally acknowledged model of sustainable urbanisation.