How Esri is transforming location intelligence

The role of Esri in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia

Esri’s success is founded on its main product, ArcGIS, and on the maxima of continuous support for government entities. Examples for how Esri’s ongoing assistance can enhance government services are: Abu Dhabi’s inter-departmental collaboration and data sharing, Dubai Municipality’s 3D building and city modelling, Kuwait’s multi-purpose mapping app for the Public Authority for Civil Information, Digital Egypt’s national initiative with the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, South Africa’s easy access to powerful data for the city of Cape Town, and Azerbaijan’s land and environmental health management system.

Esri projects in Saudi Arabia

For decades, Esri has been serving strategic customers in Saudi Arabia in a variety of industries including, but not limited to, utility organisations such as Saudi Electricity Company (SEC), the National Water Company (NWC), as well as Telcom operators like Saudi Telecom Company (STC), and Mobily.

General Authority for Survey and Geospatial Information (GASGI)

To achieve Vision 2030, GASCI established Saudi Arabia SDI (Spatial Data Infrastructure). Powered by Esri, the National SDI enhances decision-making and policy development, facilitates implementation and longer-term monitoring, and reduces the cost of government operations. According to the World Bank, in the next few years, the NSDI will contribute more than $6.2bn to the Saudi economy.

Saudi Aramco

Saudi Aramco uses Esri technology to develop a “SafeTravel” system, designed to digitise and streamline all travel by employees and contractors who drive to remote places through harsh desert conditions, day or night. Here, location intelligence is a key factor for safety.

Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs (MOMRA)

Esri participated in building the Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) for the municipal sector and provided a capacity building plan to establish a Geo-AI team who is currently managing the visual distortions from the mobile mapping panoramic views. Esri is also supporting MOMRA in building the BALADY platform and providing geospatial support services for MOMRA HQ and five main Amanas and sub-municipalities.

Esri’s longstanding and strong presence in Saudi Arabia puts it at an advantageous position to support giga projects such as NEOM, the Red Sea, ROSHN, and the Royal Commission of AlUla (RCU).

NEOM

Since the Go-Live date of NEOM, Esri technologies serve as the digital foundation for the Smart City platform allowing seamless interfaces with other applications. Again, it’s the ArcGIS platform that empowers planners, providing access to both 2D and 3D views of the GIS data layers, along with all the main GIS functions offered via web and desktop. Informing planning and investment, NEOM is using these new capabilities to reduce project costs and improve the review processes.

Esri, infrastructure management and the importance of sustainability

Esri has the platform and the capabilities to support the full life cycle of infrastructure projects from planning, through design/construction, to commissioning, operation and maintenance. As Network operators around the world face the challenges of network infrastructure modernisation with resiliency and sustainability in mind, it is clear that this requires a deep understanding of each asset’s location-based relationship to environmental and human-built systems.

Digital/GIS maps and analytics help executive leadership to prioritise infrastructure investments, while aligning their customers’ needs with sustainability goals. To perform such complex analysis, several types of data (such as historical, near-real-time or real-time data) often time coupled with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) tools are used. For example, Turkcell (Telecom operator in Turkey) used ArcGIS, AI/ML to understand where demand will come from over the next 10 years and prioritise capital investment.

Aside from capital investment, network operators are looking at digital technology and “digital twins” to improve efficiency, from planning, design, engineering to operations and maintenance. Electric utilities use digital twin technology to plan for actions like transformer replacements and reduction of maintenance issues. Digital twins empower utilities with new insights about status, reliability, and cost-effectiveness of their grid. A digital twin can also be used to make predictions and forecasts.

Energy Queensland’s digital twin in Australia is used to better manage their assets and virtually support their field crews during inspections, before the on-site job.

More than 50 percent of utility staff is working in the field. They need to capture relevant information related to assets inspections or assets anomalies observed, then communicate this information in close to real-time, along with the location information.

Performing substations inspections using digital geo-forms enables management to see the results of the inspections work orders along with their progress in a dashboard.

Esri at Gitex 2022

As one of the top 10 IT companies in the region, Esri is going to hold technology demonstrations during Dubai’s Gitex 2022. State-of-the-art GIS solutions include digital twins, smart cities, GeoAI and analytics, machine learning, Geospatial infrastructure, imagery and remote sensing, and location intelligence. Visit the Esri booth to discover how to use location intelligence for gaining a competitive advantage by improving operational and business results.

This article was originally published in our sister publication, Arabian Business magazine