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Dubai Ground Truth: methods

Every number on the map comes from a dated public source. This page says which, and how each score is computed. Last updated 21 October 2026.

Sources

Quiet score

How much active construction surrounds a point. Load = 1.0 × active registered projects within 500 m + 0.35 × those between 500 m and 1 km + 0.6 × mapped site area weight within 500 m + 0.2 × between 500 m and 1 km, where a site's weight is its area divided by 4,000 m², clamped to 0.2 to 1.5. Score = 100 / (1 + load / 3). A score of 100 means no registered or mapped construction within a kilometre; 50 means a load of three, roughly three active projects next door.

Limits: 121 of 865 active projects are placed at site level by name matching; the rest sit at community level and do not count toward a point's load. Unregistered or private works are invisible. The quietest-hotels list only includes hotels with a star rating or brand and excludes motels and guest houses.

Growth score and the next big things

Per community, from registered sales: price per square metre growth 2021 to 2026 (35 percent weight), sales momentum, the change in the number of sales (25 percent), pipeline units in active projects (20 percent), and proximity to the nearest catalyst with an exponential decay over 4 km (20 percent). Each part is a percentile rank among the 48 communities with at least 30 sales in 2021 and 80 in 2026. Communities whose growth exceeds 500 percent are excluded, because that reflects a change in what was sold rather than like-for-like appreciation, and the card says so.

Prices are medians of all registered sales, so a community's figure moves when its mix of off-plan and ready, villa and apartment changes. The sales count is always shown next to the price for that reason.

Resilience score

Score = 100 − 16 × reported severity of the community on 16 April 2024 (0 to 3) − up to 30 points for standing water within 500 m (3 points per hectare seen by Sentinel-2 the morning after) + 12 points where a drainage project or metro barrier is recorded nearby, clamped to 5 to 100. Severity 3 means homes or basements flooded or the area cut off for days; 2 means streets flooded and cars submerged; 1 means waterlogging and closures.

Communities with no report are not known to be dry; they are unreported. Radar and optical imagery under-detect water between tall buildings.

Green cover

For each community and year, the share of 80 m cells whose vegetation index (NDVI) exceeds 0.25, using the least cloudy March or April scene, with clouds, shadows and water masked by the scene classification. The lens shows the change in that share since 2017. Three desert tracts over 150 km² are excluded from the ranking because rain-fed vegetation swings them from year to year.

Growth columns and the time-lapse

Each community's column height is 28 × √(buildings completed up to that year) in metres, from 172,112 Municipality building records with a construction year. The time-lapse runs 2008 to the current year; beyond today the timeline shows announced plans only, in a dashed style, and the columns stop growing.

Plans and confidence

Each plan carries its year, source and one of three notes: official (government or master developer announcement), reported (consistent press reporting), early (announced without a published route or site). Items without an official or primary position are described on their card but not placed on the map.

Find my area

Pick a goal and up to three priorities. Each priority is one measured column per community; every eligible community is ranked on each column (percentile, 0 to 1) and the ranks are averaged with equal weight. No hidden weights.

Quiet: the quiet score at the community's label point. Near the metro: distance to the nearest station. Rising prices: change in the median sale price per m² from 2021 to 2026. Stayed dry in 2024: severity of reports for 16 April 2024 plus standing water seen from space the next morning. Greener: change in the share of vegetation from 2017 to 2026 (Sentinel-2). Big projects coming: active registered projects, homes in the pipeline and catalysts within 3 km.

Eligible: Stay needs at least one mapped hotel with a star rating or brand; Rent needs 20 or more rent contracts in 2026; Buy needs 20 or more sales in 2026 and a measured price change. Areas show the name people use: the master development that holds at least 40 percent of the community's registered projects (Dubai Land Department register), with the official community name beside it. Rental yield is not offered: rents are per contract and prices per m², so a yield figure would be invented.

Use it in Claude

The same facts and the same scoring are available to Claude as a connector. In Claude open Settings, Connectors, Add custom connector, and paste https://dubaimap.ryuklabs.io/api/mcp. Five read-only tools: find a place, area report, recommend areas, quiet hotels, compare two areas. Answers carry dates, sources and a link back to this map, and never booking or listing links.

What this map is not

It is not live. No booking rates, availability or listing photos. It does not imply endorsement by the Government of Dubai, any developer or any booking platform. It is a reading of public records, dated, for travellers, buyers and agents to check before they commit.

Source code and data pipeline: github.com/RyukLabs/dubai-ground-truth (private during version 1).