Nigeria is making significant strides in geospatial technology, a crucial tool for building smart cities and modern infrastructure across the country.
The Surveyor-General of the Federation, Abdulganiyu Adebomehin, said this at a one-day workshop on Thursday on the use cases for the very high-resolution drone imagery and street view data collected for part of the Abuja Municipal Area Council.
Adebomehin emphasised the country’s commitment to leveraging technology for national development.
“I want to say that we should all be proud of what we are going to see now. We are Nigerians, and when you talk about geospatial information and management and you talk about technology, that is what is shaping the whole world now,” he said.
He added, “When you talk about smart cities and you do not have what you want to showcase now, then there is no way you can talk about smart cities because you must have that information at a very large scale, two-centimetre imagery or less.”
The Surveyor-General revealed that significant progress had been made in mapping, with 20 out of 35 approved blocks already completed. However, a brief pause was taken before resuming the process.
“For the past four days, we decided to pause because we still have about five blocks to go through. But having successfully covered about 20 out of the 35 we were given approval to do, we decided that we should start the process in earnest,” he said.
He highlighted the importance of geospatial information in shaping the future, aligning with the government’s Renewed Hope Agenda.
“In shaping the world now, it is the geospatial management and your information that you are able to manage that is shaping the world, and we do not want Nigeria to be left behind; that is why we have to go all out of our way looking at the achievement of this government, the Renew Hope Agenda, so I want to say this is one of the achievements of the Renewed Hope Agenda,” he added.
Adebomehin also emphasised the impact of drone technology in modern warfare and infrastructure planning, noting, “We all know what you can do with the drone nowadays; those in the military will tell you when you say I have 17,000 in the army, the 17,000 in the army can perish in less than one second using a drone.”
He reiterated the need for Nigeria to stay ahead in technological advancements to build smart cities, saying, “When we say this is the first of its kind in Africa, a lot of people say this is not true, and I bet there’s no way you can get it in Africa. So, if you fail to follow technology, if you fail to follow the trend, I don’t see how we will be part of the smart city we are talking about.”
Speaking on the transformative potential of digital twins, the Head of the Department of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Azeez Olaniyi, explained how this technology could revolutionise urban planning and infrastructure management.
“We have an agency called Border Community Development, BCDE, which we have our office unit there. And I want to believe they are working in collaboration with Nigerian Immigration Services,” he said.
Olaniyi noted that while digital twins are typically associated with cities, they could also be applied to border regions.
“Then, like I mentioned in my presentation, I said digital twins are for cities now. And if you want to agree with me, most of our physical borders with our neighbouring countries are not international borders because we have borders inland, which are at the airport. But the ones at the international boundaries are not within cities. But that does not mean we cannot create digital twins for those areas,” he explained.
Citing South Korea as an example, Olaniyi described how digital twins could be used to monitor air traffic in real time.
“In fact, I’ve seen a digital twin created for airports in South Korea that monitors the movement and air traffic of every aircraft plane that comes to the airport in real time. We’ve not done it in South Korea. We have made a delay of 35 seconds or thereabouts. So, we can apply digital twins in almost any area of our life,” he added.
Olaniyi also highlighted the benefits of digital twins for urban development, infrastructure planning, and disaster management.
“For instance, we want to do some renovation. We don’t have to come here and start digging anymore. Every amendment we want to do, we do it on that virtual that exists in soft copy on our system. It saves us time. It saves us scarce resources we don’t have,” he said.
He further explained how high-resolution imagery of Abuja could aid government projects, such as new rail systems, road networks, and electricity distribution.
“Governments want to introduce a new rail, or a new road, or new electricity distribution. You don’t have to start going here and there again. From that virtual that exists on the system, you can look at it and say, oh, we have a road here. Can we bring our power line here? Or do we want to lay a pipeline? Because governments are trying to see how they can start moving crude now and petroleum products. Rather than using tankers, they want to be using pipelines. From this, we can determine the route to pass. You don’t have to start travelling around everywhere in the neighbourhoods to do that,” he said.
Olaniyi also outlined the potential of geospatial technology for population census and disaster preparedness.
“This is one significant achievement. Let me come into the area of population census for quite some time now. As you can see in the demonstration, we’ve captured the building in this real geometry. And we can even determine how many apartments are within this building. Then we can estimate in every apartment; maybe we have a father and a mother, maybe two children or three, as the case may be, and quickly estimate. These are areas that will save governments a lot of fortune when we are able to do this,” he explained.
For natural disaster response, he emphasised the predictive capabilities of digital twins.
“Another good example is the area of natural disaster response. We don’t have to wait until we have this response. We can pre-model and say, okay, if we have this volume of rainfall here, these social structures are likely to be affected. We are saving lives and properties. That is how important this is,” Olaniyi stated.
