BAHRAIN

The national mapping agency in Bahrain is the Survey Directorate (SD) which was established in the Ministry of Housing in the late 1970s.  The basic topographic mapping of the state as a whole is a 28-sheet 1:10,000 series on the UTM projection, International ellipsoid, first compiled in 1977 on a contract with Fairey Surveys, as orthophoto editions and subsequently revised regularly as a two-color line map with 2 m and 5 m contours.  Intermediate full-color series were derived from these maps and published at 1:25,000 scale (seven sheets), and 1:50,000 scale (three sheets), with single-sheet 1:100,000 and 1:200,000 scale coverage also being issued.  A regular revision program maintains these maps with a currency of no less than three years for developed areas of Bahrain.

In the north of the island the developed areas were compiled as digital mapping in a BKS Surveys contract in the early 1980s and are held in an Intergraph mapping database.  These include 1:1,000 scale coverage in 9,449 sheets, as well as 220 sheets of a 1:2,000 scale series.  The large scale map database is under constant revision with print on demand to support a wide variety of official applications including land registration and transfer and the provision of utility services.

Soviet military topographic mapping of Bahrain exists at the following scales: 1:1,000,000 (1 sheet, complete coverage, published in 1983); 1:500,000 (2 sheets, complete coverage, published 1977-1981); 1:200,000 (2 sheets, complete coverage, published in 1977); 1:100,000 (7 sheets, complete coverage, published 1978-1984) and a city topographic map of Manamamuharraq (Manama, Muharraq) published between 1977 and 1980.  These product are available in print, digital raster and digital vector GIS formats from East View Geospatial.