The Saudi-Jordanian Joint Technical Committee awarded a contract to the IGN FI / Almabani Consortium for the renewal of the boundary markers of the land demarcation line between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
The project’s objective is to renew and improve the visibility and field identification of the demarcation line originally established in 1965, through concrete objectives of renewing existing boundary markers along the demarcation line, adding markers where the distances between them are too long, and producing precise mapping at various scales covering the border area between the two countries.
The two-year project includes parallel phases of civil engineering and mapping work, both primarily based on a highly technical preliminary phase of geodetic surveys, which will involve establishing a geodetic network and determining their coordinates in an international coordinate system with centimetric precision.
Once the geodetic network processing is complete, the two phases will proceed independently:
- The civil engineering work will consist of measuring existing points, removing existing pillars, and establishing new, modern, and stronger ones in the exact same location.
- The mapping work will consist of complete coverage of the border area using Airbus Pleiades Neo satellite imagery (30 cm resolution), which will provide an excellent description of the border area in both countries. Based on the acquired satellite imagery and field work, a topographic database will be produced to enable the preparation of maps at scales from 1:10,000 to 1:500,000, as well as an atlas perfectly describing the demarcation line.
The first steering committee is currently being held in Paris; the joint border committee, composed of high-ranking officials from both governments, is present in France during the week of September 23 to 27 to attend a series of working sessions at IGN aimed at validating the preliminary methodology for the various deliverables and thoroughly reviewing the initial stages of the current project.
