Dubai Launches AI-Powered ‘Ehsan Stations’ to Support Stray Animals

Dubai Municipality has launched the ‘Ehsan Stations’ initiative, introducing AI-powered smart feeding devices designed to support stray animals across the emirate. The programme aims to improve animal welfare while promoting responsible and organised feeding practices in public spaces.

As part of the pilot phase, 12 smart stations will be installed in key locations, including public parks and municipal facilities. The stations use artificial intelligence to identify stray animals, collect data and automatically dispense food, helping authorities manage stray populations more effectively.

Officials say the initiative is intended to reduce unregulated feeding in public areas, which can sometimes create environmental or public health concerns. By providing a controlled system for feeding animals, the project aims to maintain urban cleanliness while supporting humane treatment of wildlife.

The initiative also complements Dubai’s broader animal welfare strategy, which includes shelter programmes and Trap–Neuter–Return (TNR) and vaccination initiatives for stray animals. Authorities say these measures help maintain ecological balance and promote sustainable urban biodiversity management.

AI-enabled urban infrastructure like Ehsan Stations reflects a broader trend of embedding smart-systems capability into services that were traditionally low-tech. Managed stray-animal feeding addresses genuine urban management challenges - unregulated feeding creates hygiene, pest and habitat pressures - while advancing welfare objectives that align with Dubai's broader animal-protection framework.

The programme's data-collection element also matters strategically. Population-monitoring data supports TNR (trap-neuter-return) and vaccination programme design, and provides evidence for adaptive management of urban biodiversity - a small but growing area of city-level sustainability programming globally.

For urban authorities, technology providers, animal-welfare organisations and their financial and CSR partners, Cognitud's data and digital, impact assessment and CSR teams help clients design integrated smart-city welfare programmes, structure impact-measurement frameworks aligned with SDG 11 and 15, and prepare disclosures that translate urban-management innovation into credible sustainability-programme narratives for community and stakeholder engagement.