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Advancing Climate Resilience: Omani Digital Twin Reality Model
As the lead consultant for the Omani Digital Twin Reality Model, K&A has played a pivotal role in advancing climate resilience and national security for the Sultanate of Oman. Spanning 250 km² of diverse terrain around Muscat, this pioneering initiative provides an accurate digital representation of the urban and natural environments.
Overcoming Image Capture Challenges
The digital twin reality model involved capturing images with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and constructing a 3D reality model of the area, including 43,000 fully textured buildings.
Omani Digital Twin Reality Model: Time and Site Constraints
- Every aspect of the complex project had to be completed within 125 days.
- Due to the country’s airspace constraints, including working around classified areas and commercial flights, the team only had 14 days available for flying and image capture.
- The weather also posed challenges with harsh sunlight, high temperatures, elevated humidity, and windy conditions.
Integrating High Accuracy into a Nationwide Digital Twin
To deliver the project, our team captured 330,000 drone images to create a digital twin model and auto-vectorized 43,000 buildings across the entire area in 3D using Bentley’s iTwin Capture and Esri ArcGIS, resulting in highly detailed, high-quality visualizations and analysis. The 3D model was delivered in just 90 days – 35 days ahead of schedule, with enhanced quality and at a reduced cost.
The Omani Digital Twin Reality Model serves as a national prototype for climate-focused digital transformation, demonstrating how digital technologies can help predict, prepare for, and mitigate climate-related disasters.
The digital twin will provide the government with essential tools to forecast and understand climate behavior at seasonal, annual, decadal, and centennial time scales by enabling accurate modeling of multiple scenarios — particularly those related to flooding, cyclones, sand and dust storms, and drought in the Sultanate of Oman. It will also bring significant benefits to the community by aiding decision-making related to mitigation measures, urban planning, and crisis preparedness.
The project’s innovative use of digital technologies has earned it industry recognition. It was named the Winner in the Reality Modeling Category at the Bentley Systems Year in Infrastructure Awards 2020 and honored as the Digital Twin Project of the Year at the Construction Technology Awards 2023.
