Technology to expand nationwide 3 years after contract win

Local governments directed to prioritize Naver platform for smart-city projects

Participants pose for a photo after signing an agreement last year to establish Naver Innovation, a strategic joint venture between Naver Cloud and the Saudi Arabian Housing Corp. Pictured, clockwise from left rear, are Chae Sun-ju, Naver's head of strategic business; Majed Al-Hogail, Saudi Arabia's minister of municipal and rural affairs and housing; Ryan Al-Aqeel, CEO of NHC Innovation; and Han Sang-young, executive vice president of global DX and innovation at Naver Cloud. [Naver] Participants pose for a photo after signing an agreement last year to establish Naver Innovation, a strategic joint venture between Naver Cloud and the Saudi Arabian Housing Corp. Pictured, clockwise from left rear, are Chae Sun-ju, Naver’s head of strategic business; Majed Al-Hogail, Saudi Arabia’s minister of municipal and rural affairs and housing; Ryan Al-Aqeel, CEO of NHC Innovation; and Han Sang-young, executive vice president of global DX and innovation at Naver Cloud. [Naver]

Naver’s digital twin platform has been designated the national standard platform by the Saudi Arabian government.

Naver said Thursday that its cloud-based digital twin platform had received official approval from Saudi Arabia’s Digital Government Authority as the platform for use by local governments, making it the country’s national digital twin standard platform.

The designation gives Naver a foundation to expand its technology across Saudi Arabia, three years after the company won the initial contract in 2023.

Following the Digital Government Authority’s approval, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs and Housing recently sent a circular to local governments recommending that they prioritize Naver’s platform when pursuing smart-city projects.

According to Naver, the circular instructs local governments to review Naver’s platform first when undertaking digital twin projects, with the aim of preventing duplicated investment across municipalities. It also calls for standardizing technology specifications and methodologies at the national level, effectively linking all local digital twin and digital urban planning initiatives into a single national framework.

The Saudi government plans to use Naver’s digital twin platform as the national standard to shift a wide range of local administrative functions — from urban planning and city operations to asset and infrastructure management and public safety — to a data-driven model. Local governments will also share data and operational experience with one another.

Naver won a contract from the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs and Housing in October 2023 to build a digital twin platform covering major Saudi cities. By 2025, it had completed deployments in Mecca, Medina and Jeddah, digitally modeling more than 920,000 buildings across 6,800 square kilometers — an area more than 11 times the size of Seoul.

Naver said it plans to deepen cooperation with the Saudi government and local partners following the national standard adoption, accelerating the development of locally tailored technology based on the large-scale urban digital twin expertise and data it has accumulated.

“This national standard adoption is significant not only as a validation of Naver’s technological capabilities, but also of the real-world results and trust we have built on the ground,” said Chae Sun-ju, Naver’s head of strategic business. “We will apply Naver’s technology — spanning digital twins, AI and cloud — to urban infrastructure development across Saudi Arabia, and cement our position as a technology partner driving digital transformation across the Middle East.”

chami@heraldcorp.com

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.