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How UAE managed the COVID-19 pandemic

The UAE was quick to turn to wastewater monitoring when the COVID-19 pandemic struck.

“The United Arab Emirates was the first in the region and the fifth worldwide,” Habiba Al Safar, the director of Khalifa University’s Center for Biotechnology, tells KUST Review.

Al Safar and teammates Shadi Hasan and Ahmed Yousef, in partnership with the Ministry of the Interior and Abu Dhabi Department of Energy, established the surveillance pipeline and strategic plan to tackle the pandemic in its earliest days.

It wasn’t an easy task, Al Safar says.

The team worked around the clock to prepare in-house reagents in this country. We had the full support from the government, and that helped the program to keep going non-stop.

– Habiba Al Safar

“We established a scientific committee to discuss the best way to approach this pandemic by introducing an environmental surveillance program in the UAE. And given the full lockdown and the shortage of the supply chain of chemicals, equipment and reagents, we had to come up with a plan with existing equipment and laboratory facilities in the country. We had to build a dedicated laboratory for this program, and we did it in less than four months.”

Supply-chain issues made importing chemicals and consumables from abroad difficult.

“However, the team worked around the clock to prepare in-house reagents in this country,” Al Safar says. “We had the full support from the government, and that helped the program to keep going non-stop,” she adds.

Over the course of the pandemic, the university and government team members in Abu Dhabi helped inform UAE response policy, meeting weekly with top government officials and providing alerts when they spotted incoming waves, variants and disease hotspots.

This project also led the team to publish, with many surveillance programs established around the world using the project’s protocol, Al Safar says.

The wastewater monitoring, which has since been turned over to Ministry of the Interior, gave the government the information it needed for early detection of upcoming waves. This helped it create procedures and manage lockdowns.

“The UAE has managed the pandemic very well,” she says. “All the procedures and precautions that the decision makers were conducting and the massive PCR testing drives were to the benefit of our society and beloved people.” We are very lucky to have a leadership that cares for our well-being.”

Among other benefits from the project: It also provided training to UAE nationals and police officers, Al Safar says. “We didn’t just provide services. We provided training, knowledge, research and discoveries.”

In addition, the team recently filed a patent for a sensor that can detect the COVID-19 virus in wastewater in less than one minute.

In other responses to the pandemic, Khalifa University launched in 2020 a research and development program to rapidly develop knowledge and solutions in the areas of epidemiology; digital tools for virus-spread mitigation and resiliency; and diagnostics and medical devices. Sixteen projects were funded at a total level exceeding AED 10M. These included developing membranes for anti-viral masks; detailed knowledge regarding how the COVID-19 virus transmits between mammals and humans; and a mobile app that captures health data and detects early signs of COVID-19 symptoms.

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Humanoid robots reach new depths

Humanoid robots are used in industries from medicine, law enforcement and hospitality, to maintenance and disaster relief. But Stanford University has developed a deep-sea humanoid robot that is diving in the robotics pool at Khalifa University with an end goal of exploring marine robotics for sustainable ocean ecosystems.

The OceanOneK robot — designed and built by Oussama Khatib and his Stanford team — has been five years in the making and made its Abu Dhabi debut tasked with retrieving plastic waste from the Khalifa University marine robotics pool.

But the team has bigger plans for OceanOneK

Having completed testing in the pool at Stanford on the trifecta of robotic function integration — navigation, bimanual manipulation (reciprocal hand movements needing disparity between hand actions), vision and body-control — it was time to take OceanOneK out to sea.

The robot performed several dives around the Mediterranean, reaching close to 1,000 meters — a record depth — exploring sunken vessels and retrieving artifacts.

As team members operated the robot through its haptic interface (communication system), they were able to feel what the robot was touching.

“It was pretty amazing feeling something that no other human could touch. While it was a (haptically mediated experience), it was still an amazing connection,” says Adrian Piedra, a Ph.D. student in Khatib’s Stanford lab.

CAPTION: Stanford team shares in-field experience with OceanOneK IMAGE: Khalifa University

One of the vessels was Le Francesco Crispi, an Italian steamship torpedoed by the British while enroute from Italy to France in 1943. Delicate white coral has formed on the wreck, Khatib says, that the dive’s marine biologists were very excited to touch and then collect as samples. Also present and observed were iron-eating bacteria.

The robot was able to perform tasks for archaeology and for marine biology.

– Oussama Khatib

This is why a humanoid robot was essential for this project, adds Wesley Guo, another of the project’s Stanford Ph.D. students. “The way we control the robot is direct, as this helps the operator relate intuitively. The easiest way to do this is to have the body at a scale and shape similar to the human form. We also wanted it to appear non-threatening, as it will work in collaboration with human divers at different sites.”

A typical recreational diver can safely descend to about 30 meters – anything deeper requires specialized training and equipment. At 30 meters the pressure is approximately four times that at the surface. What happens to the human body beneath these depths depends on the person’s overall health and fitness levels. At 1,000 meters, the robot experiences 100 times the atmospheric pressure, team leader Khatib explains.

So, such robots are the key to deep-water exploration. And with more autonomy comes more skill sets.

Khatib says autonomy of a robot in the water is challenging, hence the haptic interface back to a human. But the goal is to diminish the need for human intervention as much as possible.

These deep-water diving robots, called remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, are a new type of robot that can collect a lot of image data. “Operations under water require arms, hands and coordination between them, and that is what we’ve brought here with the OceanOne concept,” Khatib says.

“The interface we use goes beyond the visual – it delivers tactile-touch sensing using a haptic device. A haptic device allows humans to touch and feel what the robot is interacting with and permits one to guide the robot while it is executing delicate tasks. It acts as an avatar,” Khatib tells KUST Review.

“It interprets and affects movement and grasp request, maintains attitude and position for the human reference, and passes sensory information back to the human,” he says.

Human movement is just one of the considerations when building a robot like OceanOneK. The working environment must also be factored in. In this case that includes water and how it behaves.

Currents, for example, disrupt the intended movement, and this is where Khalifa University comes in.

The robotics pool at Khalifa University can simulate such environments, but under controllable conditions.

“Here, we can control the amount and direction of currents, we can control the waves, we can control those interactions in an ocean-like environment,” says Khatib.  “This is perfect for training and learning.”

CAPTION: Ku Robotics Pool IMAGE: Khalifa University

The Khalifa University robotics team will also work toward adding to the tasks the robot’s hands can carry out on their own.

“Full autonomy (without human intervention) will be the ultimate target; this, however, is challenging, and in the near-term humans will work with the robot to carry out tasks such as underwater valve-turning and plug-insertion,

Our objective is to increase the robot’s degree of autonomy while reducing the extent of human intervention.

– Lakmal Seneviratne, director of the Center for Autonomous Robot Systems and professor of mechanical engineering at Khalifa University

Stanford’s Khatib says these sensory-mechanical systems are also used out of the water in industries such as medicine, where a physician may interact through a haptic interface when not able to be present in the ICU. Similarly, the systems could be used for robots working on electrical grates or offshore platforms.

“In many of these applications we aim to distance humans from danger while connecting their skills to the task that must be carried out in that environment,” Khatib says.

CAPTION: Stanford and Khalifa University robotics collaboration IMAGE: Khalifa University

“There is a lot of work needed before taking these robots into the field, and Khalifa University offers a unique environment for this preparatory marine robotic study,” Khatib says. “We are also collaborating in other ways,” including curriculum development and teaching, as well as through research focus groups and workshops,” he adds.

“We look forward to more interaction with the researchers, faculty and students here.”

Among future joint projects: Khalifa University KUCARS and Stanford University Robotics Lab have recently established a collaboration to research and develop marine robotics systems for sustainable marine ecosystem applications, including ocean monitoring and ocean cleaning.

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Making it rain

Linda Zou is a UAE researcher who uses nanotechnology to develop new materials for cloud seeding, a weather-modification technology that improves the chances a cloud will produce rain. She talked to the KUST Review about her work and the future of cloud-seeding technology.

CREDIT: Khalifa University
Linda Zou

Linda Zou is a professor in the Khalifa University Department of Civil Infrastructure and Environmental Engineering and the head of the Nano and Water Laboratory. This interview has been edited for space and clarity.

QUESTION: Walk us through the basics of cloud-seeding technology and what should people who aren’t familiar with cloud seeding know.

ANSWER: The sun shines and water vapor rises up from the Earth’s surface, and these tiny water vapors will keep on rising and finally condense to become either rain or snow.

In the presence of small particles as nuclei, water vapor condenses, turning into small liquid droplets. And that droplet will hit another small droplet during the falling process, and then they form a larger droplet. The size grows and grows. When the drops reach the lower part of the atmosphere, they’re too big, too heavy, and they fall as rainfall. And unfortunately the availability of this sort of small seeding nuclei in the atmosphere is unpredictable. It could be naturally occurring particles such as volcano ashes, dust particles or pollens. But when you need it you can’t guarantee you’ll get it.

Cloud seeding is to spread artificial seeding materials by using aircraft, flying over the bottom of suitable clouds and releasing the seeding materials, and an updraft will carry them into the cloud, to start the condensation and turn the water vapor into water droplets artificially. And this is the cloud-seeding process.

Q: How important is it to the world to tap that atmospheric moisture?

A: The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) did a survey and reported more than 45 countries are practicing some sort of weather modification. Cloud seeding is one of the major (weather-modification) technologies. This implied the advancement in the cloud-seeding materials could have a wider impact to combat the water-shortage problem globally.

Q: Is cloud seeding used primarily in desert countries or are a broad range of countries practicing it?

A: (Cloud-seeding) is technology-driven; commonly you need aircraft fleets. Countries like the US, South Africa and some European countries are very active, particularly in agricultural protection, as well. (Countries may have) a different purpose: Russia is more interested in hail-suppression. China has dry regions. For many decades, the science behind this water-related process hasn’t had much innovation, UAE is driving innovation through its UAE Rain Enhancement Science Program.

CREDIT: Anas Albounni, KUST Review
AI and nowcasting

Cloud seeding can increase a region’s rainfall, but knowing when the conditions for cloud seeding are optimal can be difficult. Read more›››

Now, researchers who recently won a U.S.$1.5 million grant from the UAE’s National Center of Meteorology think they can help by tapping into artificial intelligence.

Luca Delle Monache, deputy director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes (CW3E), Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, in March received the three-year grant of the UAE Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science (UAEREP) for the project using a hybrid machine-learning framework for enhanced precipitation nowcasting.

Nowcasting in meteorology is describing the present or predicting the very near-future weather conditions. Khalifa University’s Ernesto Damiani, Linda Zou and Hussam Al Hamadi will gather data and create a prototype artificial intelligence system for data fusion and weather nowcasting for the project.

Alya Al Mazroui, UAEREP director, says the work will continue the organization’s role in advancing rain-enhancement technology, as well as “promoting the UAE’s status as a prominent hub for rain-enhancement research and helping the world tackle the challenges posed by the scarcity of potable water.” ‹‹‹ Read less

Q: That leads into the next question: What are some of the problems and limitations that your work is looking to solve?

A: The kind of seeding material adopted around the world heavily depends on atmospheric relative humidity. That means the seeding material released is only activated or useful at very high relative humidity. So a lot of cases you release (the seeds), and if it isn’t very humid conditions, it’s not useful. So because I’m thinking on the science of the interactions between materials and atmospheric relative humidity, I can see that there’s room to improve.

Q: And your proposal is to change the seeding material?

A: Yes. I proposed three ideas: Each has been investigated and concept is realized. The first is to change the surface of the material to make it more reactive (so it can work) at a lower relative humidity. Instead of 75 percent or higher, now we can use it at 65 percent.

To achieve this, we used nanotechnology to engineer a material that is activated in much broader relative-humidity conditions. Because the structure is so porous, water will melt easily, forming larger droplets, increasing the probability that it will work.

Secondly, a bioinspired hydrophilic/hydrophobic pattern was created on the seeding material to enhance the interaction with water vapor; thirdly, a porous 3D nanocomposite was developed to promote ice nucleation and growth for cloud-seeding in cold clouds.

Q: Old-technology cloud-seeding materials might be harmful to the environment. That’s another problem you’re looking to solve?

A: There are different types of seeding material used. Various salt particles are used for warm clouds; their environmental effect is less of concern. But the one you hear about is mostly silver iodide, which is mostly for cold clouds – for ice- and snow-making. Over longer periods of application, silver iodide may pose some toxic effects. It is not used in my research project, as the design of novel seeding material is to steer away from potential harmful materials.

RELATED: Climate change promises uncharted waters for scientists studying atmospheric rivers

Q: Some of your materials are inspired by natural adaptations in biological organisms. What would you say is the value of looking to nature to solve problems?

A: Nature has evolved over millions of years. Every biological system that thrives today is the positive result of evolution. Modern analytical tools enable scientists to look at the details of biology at the biochemistry level and have more understanding on how they work. This newly gained knowledge helped us to mimic the biological mechanism in designing nanomaterials. Although we’re not able to replicate biological mechanisms, I can be inspired and learn from their principles.

Cloud-seeding materials are spread by airplanes but can also be released by balloons and drones. CREDIT: UAE Program for Rain Enhancement Science
Cloud seeding
and beyond

The United Arab Emirates’ rain-enhancement operations began in the 1990s and were developed in cooperation with such international organizations as the United States’ NASA and National Center for Atmospheric Research. Read more›››

According to the UAE Program for Rain Enhancement Science, the Emirates now have more than 60 networked weather stations, five specialized aircraft used for seeding and an integrated radar network.

Other benefits from cloud-seeding research include increased understanding of cloud microphysics; cloud dynamics and thermodynamics; the physical chain of events that lead to cloud formation and rainfall; and how cloud-condensation nuclei and ice nuclei interact with clouds.

Research impacts include improved cloud-seeding materials and delivery methods and helping meteorologists better nowcast and forecast the weather. ‹‹‹ Read less

Q: What would you say are the biggest challenges to seeding clouds?

A: One of the major problems is all cloud-seeding operations are carried out in the open atmosphere. All the conditions cannot be controlled as in a closed system.

Secondly, all clouds are different at a time and they’re also varied and unpredictable. These make the evaluation of cloud-seeding effects difficult. But we accept this unpredictability. And if the seeding materials become more and more efficient, the probability (of success) is higher for any given cloud conditions.

Q: Some of your work focuses on ice and snow instead of rain. How are these approaches different?

A: It’s different and it’s the same in some regions. Clouds that form at a few thousand meters above us are in sub-zero temperatures. Precipitation at that altitude will be ice. But when ice falls down to the earth, if it falls down in cold regions it will be snow. If it falls down to the warm regions such as UAE it will melt into rain.

So for clouds with sub-zero temperatures, different techniques have to be used. The sub-zero clouds’ conditions are different. The water vapors are oversaturated in some cold clouds, so their relative humidity is like more than 100 percent but they stay as supercooled water vapor. So at this stage if (the supercooled vapor meets) a suitable ice nuclei it will form ice crystals and grow rapidly as an ice explosion, as an avalanche of ice crystals.

So I also investigate to develop this type of ice nuclei. The ice nucleus is often silver iodide. Why? the possible theory behind is that its crystal structure is similar to the ice. So crystal grows on the other crystal due to their crystal framework lattice matching. So it’s very different from the droplets, a different mechanism.

And as we said with the silver iodide there are some problems but there aren’t many alternatives. So I designed an alternative material. This material can also help create artificial snow at ski resorts. It works well in cloud-chamber experiments.

Q: Can you describe that material?

A: The novel cloud-seeding material has a shell/core structure, it has a sodium chloride core, which is covered by a nanometer thickness of titania particles. This structure offers a synergistic effect on condensation at lower relative humidity and forms larger water droplets: Both are important to increase the probability of rainfall.

Q: Is this the sort of technology that would be used to control undesirable weather, like preventing hail?

A: Yes. That’s the case in some European countries, to protect agriculture industry from extreme weather attack, such as hail and frost.

Whether the precipitation falls as rain or snow depends on the air temperature. CREDIT: Shutterstock

Q: What impact would you say cloud-seeding will have on climate change?

A: I think this is a very important question. It is in the broader spectrum of climate-change strategies. If we got more water as rainfall through cloud-seeding, it would be cooling the weather and replenish the ground-water aquifer. There would be less demand for air-conditioning, less demand for desalinization. It has very positive effects.

Q: So what’s the next frontier? What’s the next exciting development?

A: The next frontier will be scaling up the production, making the seeding materials more available. Apart from airplane, the seeding materials can be released by other methods such as balloons, or drones. In addition, it can also migrate into surface-water-harvesting applications, like catching fog.

Q: Is there anything we haven’t covered that you want people to know?

A: The UAE Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science is appreciated because they provide us funding on my research project. I really wish that this will have a ripple effect. We need to transform the novel seeding materials into commercial-scale production and wider application. We have started working on that. I need government and industry support on this direction. If this becomes commercially technology, more countries and regions will benefit.

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A framework for innovation

As the availability of natural fresh water sources rapidly declines globally, a result of world population growth, lifestyle changes and climate change, countries around the world have turned to non-traditional water sources such as wastewater reclamation and desalination.

Hassan Arafat

Dr. Hassan A. Arafat is the former director of the Center for Membranes & Advanced Water Technology at Khalifa University. He is now senior director for the Research & Innovation Center for Graphene and 2D Materials.

In fact, over the past 20 years, the total global desalination capacity has increased by more than 1,500 percent.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries particularly have grown to rely on desalination, which now provides more than 90 percent of total potable water supply in those Gulf countries.

This tremendous growth was catalyzed by a plethora of innovations that helped improve energy efficiency and cut the cost of desalination. These include new membranes, energy-recovery devices and effective membrane-based pre-treatment technologies.

However, the sustainable provision of potable water through desalination and the treatment of industrial and domestic wastewater effluents is still a significant challenge, both for the UAE and globally.

The UAE’s leadership has emphasized that securing a sustainable fresh water supply for the country is a top priority. This is indeed a grand challenge that must be met with grand, innovative solutions. To create such holistic solutions, multidisciplinary efforts are a must.

This is why Khalifa University (KU) created the Center for Membranes & Advanced Water Technology (CMAT). The Center’s main goal is to create a framework for well-coordinated research efforts that have a clear, common goal: generating a sustainable potable-water supply for the UAE and the globe.

RELATED: Solar-powered desalinations plants could help achieve global water security
RELATED: Desalination has social benefits – and costs, too

At the forefront of the Center’s research goals are developing innovative technologies for desalination, wastewater reclamation and relevant membrane processes.

This framework takes full advantage of KU’s tremendous accumulated research capacity to develop innovative technologies for desalination, wastewater reclamation and relevant membrane research.

The UAE’s leadership has emphasized that securing a sustainable fresh water supply for the country is a top priority.

CMAT also allows KU to engage UAE industry and government in research, development, demonstration and deployment of innovative water-related technologies. It focuses on research that addresses ensuring adequate availability of water to meet society’s needs while addressing concerns of environmental integrity and economic viability.

The result: The Center is a viable ecosystem for relevant technology development and intellectual-property transfer, driving interdisciplinary novel-membrane and water-technologies research to secure sustainable sources of water for the UAE and the world now and into the future.

Update: A previous version of this story incorrectly listed the director of the Center for Membranes & Advanced Water Technology at Khalifa University. Dr. Shadi Hasan is the current CMAT director. 

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Desalination has social benefits – and costs, too

A team from the United Arab Emirates, which has limited natural water resources and uses desalination to make seawater drinkable, looked at cases from several countries to identify these factors and their influence on desalination around the world, publishing their findings in the journal Desalination.

“Although the economic and environmental factors have received more attention, there is evidence to suggest that the use of desalination technologies and their associated impacts would most likely exacerbate the existing inequalities in a society,” says Yazan Ibrahim, a former graduate student and research engineer at Khalifa University who joined New York University, Abu Dhabi, for his Ph.D. in 2021.

RELATED: Solar-powered desalination plants could help achieve global water security

“This was attributed to the increased greenhouse-gas emissions, increased water prices, urban-growth motivation, shifting geopolitical relations related to water security and increased chemical pollution,” he says. The research team used a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis as the framework for a critical review of the sociopolitical factors that impact the adoption and proliferation of desalination.

A SWOT analysis is typically employed to help gain insights into the strengths and opportunities of an initiative or concept as well as the associated weaknesses and threats.

“We defined ‘sociopolitical’ factors as factors with a significant social dimension, which have either underlying social, economic or political root causes and consequences within those spheres,” Ibrahim says. “We identified eight strengths and opportunities, and seven weaknesses and threats.”

The strengths and opportunities include fast deployment and low physical footprint that comes with some desalination technologies with the potential to help remote communities and tourist facilities flourish.

Many factors are at play when it comes to the sociopolitical dimension of desalination. A holistic approach to this subject is essential.

– Yazan Ibrahim, researcher

Desalination can significantly enhance the water security of a nation, while also supporting regional stabilities by evading conflict over water resources.

Local employment opportunities during the construction and operation of desalination plants are another benefit, but easy access to water also means more work and education opportunities for women who might otherwise be tasked with the time-consuming work of sourcing and carrying water.

Most-cited weaknesses include the visual impacts, noise and land-use issues. Beyond this: the unintended consequences of excessive reliance on desalination and the potential impacts of poor mineralization of desalinated water on human health.

Freshwater contains minerals that may offer health benefits, and it’s not yet understood if desalinated water that has not been re-mineralized could have adverse health effects.

Threats to desalination also stem from social tension among those who mistrust the technologies as well as the wide range of human and natural threats to operation ranging from cyberattacks to natural disasters and oil spills.

The team’s research makes it clear that aside from political stability, water security and economic growth, desalination can also boost tourism, agriculture and education.

“Since its inception, desalination has delivered a range of benefits to societies in arid regions and supported their economic development and political stability. It must be recognized, however, that many factors are at play when it comes to the sociopolitical dimension of desalination. A holistic approach to this subject is essential,” Ibrahim says.