Naver Completes Digital Twin of Three Saudi Cities, Supporting Smart Infrastructure Goals
Naver Completes Digital Twin of Three Saudi Cities, Supporting Smart Infrastructure Goals
Internet services leader Naver has finalized its digital twin platform for three Saudi Arabian cities, advancing Riyadh’s broader strategy to implement smart city technologies across the kingdom.
They announced on Tuesday the completion of the first phase of its digital twin project, covering Makkah, Madinah, and Jeddah. The initiative aims to create virtual replicas of five Saudi cities in total.
Digital twin technology enables the creation of high-resolution, virtual versions of real-world locations. Their solution delivers detailed 3D visualizations and live data for urban infrastructure, serving planners and engineers in decision-making.
Saudi Arabia is pursuing this platform as part of its vision to build advanced urban environments and position itself as a global leader in smart cities. The effort is spearheaded by Saudi-based firms Balady and NHC Innovation, with Naver delivering the core technology.
Balady, the national mapping agency, and NHC Innovation, a unit of Saudi Arabia’s National Housing Company, are driving the implementation of the platform.
The mapped area across the three cities spans more than 6,800 square kilometers—over 11 times the size of Seoul—and includes over 920,000 buildings.
Naver’s platform features comprehensive urban planning tools. These include terrain analysis for earthwork and slope measurements, skyline and sunlight assessments for visual impact studies, and regulatory compliance checks using pre-construction data.
It also offers simulations for floods by integrating historical flood data with urban water systems and allows for real-time rainfall monitoring through radar-based cloud tracking.
Balady plans to expand the system to other cities, ultimately creating a national platform with broad use across public and private sectors.
“This platform is particularly meaningful as Naver contributes to Saudi Arabia’s digital transformation—a potential global benchmark in smart city development,” a Naver official stated. “We will continue to enhance the platform in collaboration with local partners and broaden its scope and use cases.”
This corporation was awarded the project by the Saudi Ministry of Municipal Rural Affairs and Housing in October 2023, with work starting in July 2024.
On May 28, Naver Cloud and NHC Innovation also signed a deal to establish a joint venture, Naver Innovation, to further develop the digital twin initiative.
About Naver Corporation
Naver Corporation is a South Korean internet conglomerate headquartered in Seongnam that operates the search engine Naver. Founded on June 2, 1999, by Lee Hae‑jin, the company was the first in Korea to develop its own search engine and to introduce comprehensive search, which integrates web, news, images, blogs, and more on a single page. Their ecosystem has since expanded to include services such as email, mapping (NAVER Map), blogs, online Q&A (Knowledge launched in October 2002), webcomics (Naver Webtoon since 2004), AI translation (Papago launched July 2017), mobile payment (Naver Pay since June 2015), and its AI platform CLOVA.
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