The Joint Saudi Jordanian Technical Committee has awarded the IGN FI – Almabani Consortium a contract for renewing the land boundary line marks between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
The purpose of the project is to renew and improve the visibility and identification on the ground of the boundary line initially implemented in 1965, achieved through the concrete objectives of renewing the existing border markers on the boundary line, adding line markers where the distances separating them is too long and producing accurate mapping at different scales covering the border area between the two countries.
The two years project framework includes civil works and mapping phases conducted in parallel, both heavily relying on a highly technical preliminary phase of geodetic survey that will consist in establishing a geodetic network (survey points) and determining their coordinates in an international coordinate system with an accuracy better than 1 cm.
Following the completion of the geodetic network processing, both phases will run independently:
- The civil works will consist in measuring existing points, removing the existing pillars and establishing new modern stronger ones in the exact same location.
- The mapping works will consist in a complete Airbus Pleiades Neo satellite imagery (30 cm resolution) coverage of the border area providing an excellent description of the border area in both countries. Based on the acquired satellite imagery and field works, a topographic database will be produced supporting the preparation of maps from scales 1:10 000 to 1: 500 000, along with an Atlas perfectly describing the boundary line.
The first Steering Committee is currently taking place in Paris, the Joint Border Committee involving high level officials from both governments is present in France throughout the week 23-27 September attending a series of work sessions in IGN aimed at preliminary methodology validation for the various outputs and a full review of the current initial project stages.
