Increasing Annual Pilgrim Capacity Each year, a significant number of the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims visit the city of Al-Madinah in Al-Munawwarah, Saudi Arabia. It is the second-holiest city for Muslims and was the first Islamic capital. Pilgrims come to visit the city’s three prominent mosques and other areas of religious and historical significance. Over the years, the number of pilgrims has increased exponentially. To accommodate the growing numbers, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia wanted to increase the capacity of annual visitors from 8 million to 30 million by 2030. The kingdom planned a SAR 7 million project to build museums and plan routes to historical, culture, and tourist sites. With more than 55 years of experience, Ala Abdulhadi & Khalifa Hawas Consulting Engineering Company (AHCEC) was tasked with designing the plan, which included expanding transportation systems and hospitality facilities while pre- serving historical sites. Developing Reality Models for Enhanced Urban Planning AHCEC worked with the Madinah Development Authority to create strategic execution plans for the project. For example, the city wanted to implement reality modeling practices to help plan the development of the 55-square- kilometer historical area of the city, allowing the team to gather all the proper resources and streamline the project timeline. This model would be used to create a digital twin for the central part of the city. AHCEC was also asked to help conduct mobile mapping for the 700-square-kilometer road network, which includes 7,900 kilometers of roads. The team needed to build a comprehensive application that contained 3D mobile mapping and reality mesh data to support the urban planning team. With this large area to cover and the deadline shortened from two years to one, AHCEC turned to an innovative and interoperable digital solution. Conducting Surveying and Mapping with UAVs and Mobile Devices To begin, the project team captured LiDAR data to create a hybrid model that also included unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) data. Other team members drove through the streets to capture data for the model. AHCEC divided the city AHCEC Developed Reality Model of Second-holiest City in Islam ContextCapture and Orbit Helped Model and Survey 41,672 Buildings and 7,000 Kilometers of Roads
into 2.25-hectare cells and used six UAVs in the field. The team established 1,038 control points around the city, which allowed them to ensure accuracy and finish data capture in 85 days with 7,033 UAV flights. Using ContextCapture, the project team processed nearly 750,000 images, about 13.7 terapixels, to create a realistic 3D model of the city. AHCEC also used a 3D mapping solution to manage the large amounts of mo- bilemapping data. Orbit, Bentley’s 3Dmapping solution, helped effectively manage and feature extract content, as well as publish mobile mapping data. The application was able to manage and extract the large amounts of drone data and create panoramic images for the model. The interoperability of the applications also allowed the model to be exported in web-ready formats for easier approvals from the government and other stakeholders.
3D reality mesh of the Khalidiyah District generated with ContextCapture.
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august 2020
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