사진 확대 Image of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on Naver’s digital twin platform. Naver
Naver’s digital twin platform has been adopted as the national standard of the Saudi Arabian government.
Saudi local governments are expected to use Naver’s digital twin platform first when promoting smart city projects. It is the fruit of three years since Naver won an order for a project to build a digital twin in major Saudi cities in 2023.
Team Naver (Naver and its major affiliates) announced on the 20th that its cloud-based digital twin platform has been officially approved by the Saudi Digital Government Agency (DGA) as a platform for local governments.
Team Naver previously established digital twins in three regions, Mecca, Medina, and Jeddah, after winning a $100 million project from the Saudi Ministry of Autonomous Administration and Housing in October 2023 to create a digital twin platform for major Saudi cities.
TeamNaver’s digital twin platform is restored to a three-dimensional (3D) model that maps the city’s appearance and is used for various local administrative tasks such as urban planning, disaster response, and topographic analysis.
When planning urban development, it is possible to analyze the prospect right of a specific area or simulate the amount of sunlight, and to identify dangerous areas by conducting flood simulations based on past flood history and waterway data.
As its platform is officially certified by the government, TeamNaver can expect supply to other local governments across Saudi Arabia.
The Ministry of Government Administration and Housing recently sent an official letter to each local government recommending that Team Naver’s platform be introduced first when promoting smart city projects.
The official document calls for each local government to first review Team Naver’s platform when seeking digital twin projects to prevent overlapping investments between local governments and unify technical standards and methodologies at the national level.
With the adoption of this national standard, Team Naver plans to strengthen cooperation with the Saudi government and partners and advance local customized technologies. Naver also established Naver Innovation, a joint venture with the Saudi National Housing Corporation (NHC), in May last year for its local business.
“Based on this, we will incorporate TeamNaver’s technology capabilities such as digital twin, artificial intelligence (AI), and cloud into the construction of urban infrastructure across Saudi Arabia and further solidify our position as a key technology partner to help digital transformation in the Middle East,” said Seon Ju Chae, head of Naver’s strategic business and chairman of Naver Innovation.
[Reporter Jeong Hojun]