Doha International Research Articles

Qatar's Role in Promoting International Peace through Interfaith Dialogue: A Case Study of the Doha International Center for Interfaith Dialogue

Qatar's Role in Promoting International Peace through Interfaith Dialogue: A Case Study of the Doha International Center for Interfaith Dialogue

Parenting education programs in the Arab region

This paper provides an analysis of three focus group discussions (FGDs) held in Morocco, Jordan, and Oman, with a specific focus on the importance of fathers' involvement in the programs. Data is based on the 2021 Doha International Family Institute study entitled “Parenting Programs in the Arab Region” conducted by the Ibn Khaldun Center for Research and Studies, Jordan. It begins with the information currently accessible based on assessing pertinent literature on parenting education programs. Members participated in the FGDs to explore their experiences with parenting programs and how those programs affected their parenting knowledge and skills. All three focus group sessions were only attended by women, reinforcing the perception of traditional gender roles and obligations. The paper concludes with recommendations toward the promotion of fathers’ involvement in programs, such as enacting paternity and parental laws, involving religious clerics that can advocate for the importance of father involvement during Friday prayers.

Myths and misconceptions as obstacles to combating domestic violence against women: policy and practice implications

Myths and misconceptions about the causes of domestic violence against women constitute major obstacles to combating it. Understanding what causes a social problem is the first step toward introducing policy measures and developing a prevention and response mechanism to address and mitigate its occurrence and impact. This article is based on a study conducted by the Doha International Family Institute (DIFI) on “Domestic Violence against Women in Qatar”, which adopted the methodology of an analytical desk review of secondary sources on domestic violence in Qatar, from 2020 to 2021. The article investigates the causes of “domestic violence”, as explained by the current theories that constitute the knowledge base for this subject. Due to the importance of this matter for policy-making, the main objective of such exploration has been to uncover myths and refute the common misconceptions and information that tried to explain the root causes of domestic violence. The study showed that all of these theories are tainted by defects and flaws; to address their shortcomings, the “Power and Control Wheel Theory” was presented, which clarified that the act of violence and harm is an “intended act”. Within this context, this article argues that root causes of violence are not attributed to mental illness, drug or alcohol abuse, or poverty; neither are they ascribed to "loss of control" or “anger management” issues. Violence is seen as an integral part of a systematic pattern of deliberate behavior aimed at initiating and maintaining “power and control” over the victim. Further to that, the article shows how myths and misconceptions impact policy-making, suggesting that prevention and intervention efforts on this subject should be guided by notions that emphasize the “intentionality” of domestic violence in order to increase women’s safety and hold perpetrators accountable for their actions.

QU Press Dialogue with 2021 Literature Nobel Laureate Prof. Abdulrazak Gurnah

ABSTRACT: Nobel laureate Prof. Abdulrazak Gourna was invited by Qatar University Press and warmly welcomed by the audience of the Doha International Book Fair. The long interview focused on the relationship between the author and publisher and responsibilities of the author to represent the concerns of his local culture on a world stage. Here, the significance of translation was apparent as well as direct communication between author and audiences worldwide. His African, Arabic, and Islamic roots contributed to the rich heritage of Prof. Gurnah, whose novels unravel this complexity of identities. The dialogue was enriched by a discussion on how the author as a novelist and academic dealt with postcolonialism and the evil of colonialism. More importantly, how in his original home Zanzibar, different societies, the coastal cultures, the Arab traders, the Indian traders, the Swahili traders, and the people in the interior, negotiated their coexistence peacefully, which ended with the arrival of European colonialism. This led to fragmentation of African societies and in many ways was responsible for the oppression and dictatorship that ravaged the contents.

An Evaluation of the External Trade Policy of the European Union in terms of a Unified Structure: Case of Doha Round

In the first part of this study, the external trade policy of EU will be explored by elaborating the policy tools and decision making procedures in order to reach an argument about whether EU is a unified actor on these bases. For this reason, in order to go into details, a comparison of European external trade in goods and services will be specifically focused on in the second part for the sake of any conclusion related to its collectivity on these trade activities. In the third part, Doha International Trade Round will be introduced as an example case to be studied in the final part, where the reflections of a possible unified structure within the EU will be examined.

Analysis and Calibration of Empirical Relationships for Estimating Evapotranspiration in Qatar: Case Study

AbstractKnowledge of evapotranspiration (ETo), which is the process of water loss from vegetated soils due to evaporation and transpiration, is important in real-time irrigation management and water-resource allocation, particularly in water-scarce regions. In this study, several methods used in estimating evapotranspiration, including the Blaney-Criddle, Hargreaves-Samani, Jensen-Haise, Linacre, and Turc methods were calibrated and validated against the Penman-Monteith model, which is considered as the standard method of estimating evapotranspiration. The paper utilizes data from the Doha International Airport meteorological station over a period of 30 years (January 1985–December 2014). ETo values were estimated using the different methods. These values were then compared to those obtained by the Penman-Monteith method. Using appropriate indicators, the Turc method was found to be the best for estimating ETo over Doha (R2=0.9519, RMSE=1.4511 mm day−1, and MAE=1.1633 mm day−1). The Turc method comes in...

Analysis of meteorological parameters for dense gas dispersion using mesoscale models

The current study focuses on characterizing the atmospheric details required for dense gas dispersion analysis resulting from release of cryogenic liquids like LNG. The study investigates the effectiveness of coupling the prognostic MM5 mesoscale model with the CALMET diagnostic model for producing meteorological conditions that is characteristic of dry and arid regions like Qatar, with non-neutral boundary conditions. MM5-CALMET wind fields and temperature data are compared with the meteorological field observations from the Doha International Airport (DIA) on a monthly basis, daily basis and hourly basis to study the effect of different averaging periods. The monthly averages replicate the annual patterns of meteorological parameters very well. However difference in observation and model are observed for wind speed and wind direction variable. The daily averages obtained from the model are in good agreement with the observation for wind speed and temperature. For hourly averaging, the model is found capable of mimicking the temperature of a given location, but not wind speed and direction. The prediction of wind direction parameter using MM5-CALMET is moderate for any averaging period. The sub-optimal performance of wind direction variable is attributed to grid resolution of vertical and horizontal layers of MM5-CALMET model. Additionally a case study is performed to illustrate the effect of variation of meteorological parameters on the lower flammability limits (LFL) resulting from flammable dense gas release of LNG. The case study demonstrates the issues that arise in a risk analysis study when “wrong” meteorological data could be used. The overall study indicates that utilizing the coarsest prognostic meteorological model output in a diagnostic model provides an effective option for generating meteorological inputs for dispersion studies.

Enhanced Models for a Mixed Arrival-Departure Aircraft Sequencing Problem

This paper addresses the static aircraft sequencing problem over a mixed-mode single runway (or closely interacting parallel runways), which commonly constitutes a critical bottleneck at airports. In contrast with disjunctive formulations, our modeling approach takes advantage of the underlying structure of an asymmetric traveling salesman problem with time-windows. This enables the development of efficient preprocessing and probing procedures, and motivates the derivation of several classes of valid inequalities along with partial convex hull representations to enhance problem solvability via tighter reformulations. The lifted model is further embedded within the framework of two proposed heuristics that are compared against the traditional first-come first-served (FCFS) heuristic with landing priority: an optimized FCFS policy (OFCFS) and a threshold-based suboptimized heuristic (TSH) with an a priori fixing of the relative order of aircraft that are sufficiently time-separated. Computational results using real data based on Doha International Airport (DOH) as well as simulated instances are reported to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed exact and heuristic solution methods. In particular, for the DOH instances, heuristics OFCFS and TSH achieved an attractive runway utilization (4.3% and 5.0% makespan reduction, respectively, over the base FCFS policy with landing priority), while exhibiting limited aircraft position deviations (0.45 and 0.49 deviations on average, respectively, from the base FCFS positions with landing priority, with similar results being obtained for the simulated instances). The superiority of the proposed optimization models over previous disjunctive formulations is also demonstrated for challenging problem instances, resulting in over 50% CPU savings for the larger instances in our test-bed.

Runway capacity management – An empirical study with application to Doha International Airport

This paper examines a three-faceted approach for runway capacity management, based on the runway configuration, a chosen scheduling approach, and an aircraft separation standard. These factors prompt alternative runway settings that are encapsulated using a classical mixed-integer formulation. The optimal solution for each runway setting is compared against our proposed optimization-based heuristic. This integrated approach is applied to investigating the transition from the (Old) Doha International Airport to the New Doha International Airport. Our empirical study based on historical data reveals that the proposed heuristic consistently yields optimal or near-optimal schedules, with considerable savings in fuel cost and reductions in delays, while preserving the spirit of an FCFS sequencing policy.

Ground measurements of Global Horizontal Irradiation in Doha, Qatar

The present work shows an analysis of ground measurements of Global Horizontal Irradiation (GHI) taken at the Doha International Airport for the period 2008–2012. Inter-annual variability and monthly averages of GHI values were calculated from the available records of daily total irradiation values, analysed and discussed along with the daily averages. The average daily GHI value in Doha for the whole 5-year period is 5.61 kWh/m2/day, a total of 2048 kWh/m2/year. The highest monthly average is 6.97 kWh/m2/day during the month of June, followed by May with 6.92 kWh/m2/day. Day 149 of the year, which corresponds to the 29th of May, shows the highest daily average for this period, with 7.49 kWh/m2/day. In addition to global solar radiation, the daily and monthly average clearness indices along with three meteorological parameters (air temperature, relative humidity and air pressure) are presented and analysed. The annual average of clearness index for Doha obtained from ground measurements is 0.62, somewhat higher than the 22-year averaged value provided by the NASA-SSE database, 0.57. GHI and clearness index values are important parameters for solar-related projects; GHI assessment, for instance, is vital for PV applications. Even though the measurements were taken in Doha, a coastal and an expanding city, the values found in this study indicate that Doha has a good potential for this kind of applications and better conditions could be expected in other areas of Qatar.

Characteristics of surface layer turbulence in coastal area of Qatar

A characterization of the atmospheric surface layer in coastal region of Qatar is presented in the present paper. The micrometeorological data is collected in the New Doha International Airport (25.25N, 51.62E), at a pier 500 m into the ocean by deploying tower based instruments during the month of June-2011. The normalized variance of the three components of velocity and temperature are studied within the framework of Monin–Obukhov similarity theory. The normalized variances of stream wise and transverse velocity at near-neutral condition are found to be consistent with the reported values from measurement sites around the world, but the normalized variance of vertical velocity at near-neutral condition is found to be consistently lower in the present case. The dependency of the normalized velocity variances with buoyancy parameter indicates a higher growth rate of variances, compared to other investigations. The non-dimensional variance of temperature matches well with the past investigations, but the correlation between vertical velocity and temperature indicates higher magnitude for the present location.

Study of interrelationship between atmospheric turbulence with oceanic wave motions

The exchange of momentum between the wind and the ocean surface is the primary source of various oceanic phenomena, both in large (e.g., El Niño) and small-scales (e.g., generation of wind waves, storm surge and coastal upwellings). Based on the existing literature on wind-wave interaction, it can be suggested that a unique missing link exists between the standard atmospheric and oceanic-circulation models. This is due to the inherent difficulty in the theoretical formulation of the models describing the phenomena and experimental measurement of the contributing factors in the near ocean surface wind measurement and surface pattern dynamics. An experimental site was acquired at the under-construction New Doha International Airport in Qatar to help throw light on the aforementioned difficulty. The site is in an area with light aircraft traffic and is surrounded by a 6m deep ocean and almost flat terrain in all directions. Wind velocity measured at more than 7m/s comes over the ocean surface around morning time. An array of three sonic anemometers, thermocouples, net radiometer, two digital cameras and a complete weather station are to be installed on the site. The sonic anemometers are intended to measure the wind velocity and direction at different elevations from the ocean surface. The digital cameras will work synchronously with the anemometers to acquire images of the ocean surface. A variation wave acquisition stereo system will be used to reconstruct the 3D elevation of the ocean wave based on the principle of stereo reconstruction. At the end, the plausible link between the atmospheric and oceanic phenomenon will be explored experimentally which will lead to a better prediction model.

Knowledge, attitude and practice towards SARS.

The objective of the study was to explore the knowledge, attitude and practice of the population of Qatar towards severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). The study took the form of a cross-sectional community-based survey in Doha International Airport and primary health care centres situated in urban and semi-urban areas of Qatar. The survey was conducted among travellers arriving at Doha International Airport and community residents visiting health centres from April to September 2003. A total of 1,800 subjects were approached for the study of which 1,386 (77.0%) responded to the questionnaire. The study showed that although 79.4% of the total subjects claimed to know about SARS, only 8.0% had accurate knowledge about all of the symptoms of SARS. The respondents' satisfaction with the preventive measures taken by the health authorities was only 66.6%. Overall, 73.0% of the total subjects knew that SARS was highly infectious; 69.9% knew that it could spread through close contact; 67.4% were aware that high fever was the early symptom; and 60.8% thought SARS could be cured. Half of the subjects said they had gained most of their knowledge on SARS through television and radio programmes (52.2%). Three-fifths (60.1%) were afraid to travel for fear of being affected by SARS. The level of awareness of SARS among Qataris was poor (31.7%) compared to that among non-Qataris (68.3%). The level of knowledge about SARS was better among educated subjects. The survey found a high level of stress and fear among the respondents. Health authorities should be on the alert and re-examine their capacity to manage an outbreak like SARS in the event that such a mishap should recur in the future.

Economics of off-shore/on-shore wind energy systems in Qatar

This work presents an assessment of the potential and economical feasibility of adopting off-shore/on-shore wind energy as a renewable source of energy in Qatar. An analysis is presented for the long term measured on-shore wind speed (1976–2000) at Doha International Airport. A similar analysis is presented for the measured off-shore wind speed at the Qatari Haloul Island. For the on-shore measurements, the average annual wind speed (at 20 m height) was found to be about 5.1 m/s. On the other hand, for the off-shore measurements at Haloul, the average annual wind speed was found to be about 6.0 m/s. This result indicates the suitability of utilizing small to medium-size wind turbine generators, efficiently. Such generators can be implemented for water pumping and to produce sufficient electricity to meet vital, limited needs of remote locations, such as isolated farms, which do not have access to the national electricity grid. An economical assessment is presented which takes into consideration the interest recovery factor, the lifetime of the wind energy conversion system (WECS), the investment rate and operation and maintenance costs. The results indicate that the cost of electricity generation from the wind in Qatar compares favorably to that from fossil fuel resources. The feasibility of utilizing off-shore wind turbine systems to meet the power requirements of the island of Haloul and possibly provide additional power for nearby on-shore areas is discussed.

A comparative study of temperatures of direct sunlight and air temperatures in a standard screen measured at Doha International Airport - a pilot study

An observational campaign was conducted at Doha International Airport, Arabian Gulf to find out difference between air temperature in a standard screen and direct sunlight. Hourly observations recorded during July-August 1998 and June-August 1999 formed the basis of the study. Difference between screen temperature (ST) and outside temperature (OT) in respect of all hourly data in the above period from 0600 to 1800 hrs of local time have been computed and analysed. In order to examine the difference before sunrise and after sunset, observations were also made during 1900-0500 hrs of local time from 1st to 18th of July 1998. Results of the study revealed that the magnitude of the differences between OT and ST is not as high as expected. The highest difference observed was 5.1° C on 16th July 1999 at 0900 hr. As anticipated, the temperature of direct sunlight between 0600 hr and 1700 hr were always higher than the screen temperature. However, after 0500 pm of local time, the screen temperatures are found to be higher than outside temperature though the sunset time in these months are after 0600 pm. The mean difference between ST and DT in June, July and August respectively found to be 1.43° C, 1.53° C and 1.67° C. The highest difference observed in these months was 3.8° C, 5.1° C and 4.1° C respectively. The study has also indicated that the difference between OT and ST is generally higher during 0900-1000 hrs of local time and lower during two hours before sunrise and sunset.