Tasreef: AED 30bn and a 700% increase in Dubai’s stormwater capacity

The storm of April 2024, when Dubai took months of rainfall in a day, found the limit of the existing stormwater network: streets and underground car parks went under. The city's answer was quick and large.

What was approved

In June 2024 the Tasreef programme was approved at AED 30bn — a scheme to develop stormwater drainage across the whole emirate, with a stated increase in network capacity of 700%.

• AED 30bn — programme value.
• +700% — increase in network capacity.
• 20 million m³ per day — design tunnel capacity.
• 230 m³/s — design flow.
• 2033 — full completion.

The core is deep gravity tunnels: water is collected and carried away by gradient rather than by pumping. It is the largest single-system rainwater collection scheme in the region. A side effect of the approach is roughly a 20% reduction in the cost of building and running pumping stations.

Progress

The programme runs in phases. In April 2025 Dubai Municipality awarded contracts for four phases worth about AED 1.44bn. Full completion runs to 2033 — a decade of infrastructure construction rather than a one-off measure.

Why a buyer should care

Drainage rarely appears in a project presentation, but it decides what happens to a district in the next heavy rain. This is not abstract: after April 2024 a number of Dubai transactions genuinely collapsed, with buyers seeing footage of flooded streets and declining to complete.

A note on scale is useful here. Dubai took more than 140 mm in April 2024 — an event outside decades of observation. Cities with mature drainage and regular rainfall flood at substantially lower volumes. The question is not whether it rains somewhere, but whether a given system is designed for a rare extreme, and what is done when it turns out not to be.

Three questions about a specific district

• Levels and topography. Where the site sits relative to surrounding development — in a hollow or on a rise. Water collects in hollows regardless of network quality.
• The underground car park. How the ramp is built: threshold, drainage channel, sump pump. A flooded car park is the most common and most expensive damage in heavy rain, and it is solved at building design level rather than city level.
• What already happened. A direct question to the management company: did the development flood in April 2024, and what was changed afterwards. The answer is verifiable with neighbours.

How to read it overall

A AED 30bn programme is not a guarantee that a particular street stays dry tomorrow — works run to 2033. What it does answer is the question an investor asks of any city: are systemic problems acknowledged here, and is money put behind fixing them. In Dubai's case, two months passed between the event and an approved budget.