Naver delivers three Saudi smart city digital twins
Korean tech leader delivers on $100 Million Saudi digital twin project
#SaudiArabia #digitaltwins - South Korean digital services giant Naver Corp. has now completed digital twin platforms for three major cities in Saudi Arabia, as part of a $100 million contract won in 2023. The digital twins covering 6,800 square kilometres and mapping over 920,000 buildings across the cities of Makkah, Medina and Jeddah. The digital twins are the first phase of a five-year project led by National Housing Company (NHC) subsidiary NHC Innovation. The digital twins are built to work on top of the platform of national mapping service provider Balady. Naver’s contract includes plans to create digital twins of two additional Saudi cities.
SO WHAT? - Digitising an area of 6,800 square kilometres with over 920,000 individual buildings, the new digital twins developed by Naver for Saudi Arabia are arguably the biggest and most advanced digital city models in the Middle East. The success of the project is the culmination of two years of discussions and preparations with Saudi stakeholders and has led to the formation of a new NHC-Naver joint venture Naver Innovation. The new company will develop and operate a map-based super app to provide public digital services, such as housing and transportation.
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Naver Corp. has now completed digital twin platforms for three major cities in Saudi Arabia. The digital twins of Makkah (Mecca), Medina and Jeddah form part of a $100 million contract won in 2023.
The three-city coverage area exceeds 6,800 square kilometres with detailed mapping of over 920,000 individual buildings, creating one of the world's most comprehensive urban digital environments.
The new digital twin platforms enable real-time urban planning, flood simulation, and building regulation compliance. Comprehensive urban planning tools include terrain analysis for earthwork volume calculations, slope assessments, and skyline analysis to evaluate landscape conditions in designated areas.
Engineers will be able to input pre-construction design data to verify whether proposed buildings comply with local regulations, whilst natural disaster simulations integrate historical flood data and urban waterway information for risk assessment.
Real-time rainfall radar visualisation enables authorities to monitor rain cloud movements and weather patterns across the three holy cities, supporting emergency response and infrastructure management decisions.
Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Municipalities and Housing awarded Naver and partners the project in October 2023, with development commencing in July 2024 under partnerships with Korea Land and Geospatial Informatix Corporation.
The platform supports advanced analytical features including sunlight exposure simulations for architectural planning and integrated data analysis capabilities for comprehensive urban development strategies.
The digital twin coverage will be expanded to cover additional Saudi cities before scaling into a comprehensive national platform serving both public and private sector applications.
Naver Cloud and NHC Innovation announced the formation of a joint venture two weeks ago called Naver Innovation to develop digital twin solutions and explore new commercial applications for the technologies across the Kingdom.
ZOOM OUT - Naver’s strategic push into the Saudi market has been supported heavily by the South Korean government over the past two years. In addition to the company’s own commercial efforts, it has been championed in Saudi Arabia by several government ministers. The announcement of Naver’s deal to build the Kingdom’s digital twins was announced in October last year during the official visit of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol. Naver Corp. recorded revenues of $7.34 billion last year and its largest shareholders are Korean National Pension Service (9% and BlackRock (5%). It is listed on the Seoul stock exchange.
[Written and edited with the assistance of AI]
VIDEO
Watch the digital twins demo video (YouTube)
Read more about digital twins in the region:
Digital twin takes traffic signals to next level in Dubai (Middle East AI News)
Naver, Swiss-Mile work on robotic solutions for digital twins (Middle East AI News)