Estimating the Economic Value of

Geospatial Information
and Technologies to the Economy
of Saudi Arabia

MARCH 2022
© 2022 General Authority for Survey and Geospatial Information
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Design: Amy Chan Design

CONTENTS
List of Acronyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Saudi Vision 2030 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Geospatial Sector in KSA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
General Authority for Survey and Geospatial Information (GASGI) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Study motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
The Economics of Geospatial Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
What is Geospatial Information? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
The Value of Geospatial Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
The Role of Governments in the Provision of Geospatial Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Scope of work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Partial versus general equilibrium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Economic Sectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Approaches to Measure Economic Benefits of GIT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Other Limitations and Basic Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Benefits Estimation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Disaster Risk Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Energy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Commerce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Public Safety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Public Health . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Infrastructure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Summary of Expected Benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Shaping the Value of Geospatial Data: Recommendations and Conclusions . . . . . . . 59
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Annexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Use Case Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
DRM Use Case: Early Warning Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Education Use Case: Schools siting and management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Commerce use case: Smart Ports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Public Safety use case: Ambulances prepositioning and routing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Health use case: Wireless Alert Messaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Examples of GI uses in Tourism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia i
LIST OF ACRONYMS
ACRONYM EXPANDED FORM
AAM Advanced Asset Management

ADA Arriyadh Development Authority

ADO Advanced Distribution Operations

AI Artificial Intelligence

AMG Automated Machine Guidance

AMI Advanced Metering Infrastructure

ARAMCO Saudi Arabian Oil Company

ATO Advanced Transmission Operations

BIM Building Information Management

BLS Bureau of Labor Statistics

CBA Cost-benefit Analysis

CCTV Closed Circuit Television

DCF Discounted Cash Flow

DRM Disaster Risk Management

EMS Emergency Medical Services

EU European Union

EWS Early Warning Systm

FCC Federal Communications Commission

FEMA Federal Emergency Management Agency

FHRC Flood Hazard Research Center

FHRC Flood Hazard Research Centre (UK)

GASGI General Authority for Survey and Geospatial Information

GCC Gulf Cooperation Council

GCS General Commission for Survey

GDP Gross Domestic Product

GI Geospatial Information

GIS Geographic Information System

GIT Geospatial Information and Technologies

GODI The Global Open Data Index

GPS Global Positioning System

IC Intelligent Compacting

ICT Information and Communication Technologies

IGIF Integrated Geospatial Information Framework

IGN Institut géographique national

IHME Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation

IMF International Monetary Fund

ii Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
ACRONYM EXPANDED FORM
INSPIRE Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe

IOT Internet of Things

IRAP International Road Assessment Program

IT Information Technology

KSA Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

LIDAR Light detection and ranging

MEWA KSA Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture

MOE KSA Ministry of Education

MOH KSA Ministry of Health

MVC Motor Vehicle Crash

NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

NPV Net Present Value

NSDI National Spatial Data Infrastructure

OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

OOHHA out-of-hospital cardiac arrests

PETS Privacy Enhancing Technologies

RMB Chinese Yuan (Currency)

ROI Return on Investment

SAIDI System Average Interruption Duration Index

SAIFI System Average Interruption Frequency Index

SCRA Saudi Red Crescent Authority

SDI Spatial Data Infrastructure

SMS Safety Management System

TCP Technical Cooperation Program Agreement

UK United Kingdom

UNDP United Nations Development Programme

UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

UN-GGIM The United Nations committee on Global Geospatial Information Management

US United States

USGS United States Geological Survey

VSL Value of Statistical Life

WB World Bank

WEA Witeless Emergency Alerts

WHO World Health Organization

WRI World Resources Institute

WTP Willingness to pay

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This report is the product of technical assistance
funded by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia/World Bank
Technical Cooperation Program (TCP) Agreement
which brings technical expertise and global knowledge
to KSA entities with the objective of supporting the
government’s development agenda. The technical
assistance was carried out by a World Bank (WB) team
under the guidance and leadership of the General
Authority for Survey and Geospatial Information
(GASGI). The World Bank Team was led by Alvaro
Federico Barra (Land and Geospatial Specialist) and
composed of Jason Russ (WB Senior Economist), Nadia
A. A. K. H. Karam (WB Operations Officer), Olatunde
Olatunji (Junior Researcher and Writer), Abhishek
Nagaraj (Assistant Professor, University of California
Berkeley), Esther Marie Shears (Researcher), Claudia
Berg (Transport Economist), Tao Tao (Researcher),
Reynaldo Bench (Senior Ports Specialist), Andy Coote
(Senior Geospatial Specialist) and Xiaoying Yang
(Junior Researcher).
This study could not have been completed without
the strong cooperation of all of the stakeholders who
supported this initiative. We acknowledge HRH Prince
Mohammed Bin Salman – Crown Prince, Minister of
Defense, and Chairman GASGI Board of Directors,
for his trust and strong support for the development
of the future vision of the Kingdom’s Survey and
Geospatial Information sector, without which this
study would not have been possible. The Ministry of
Finance supported this work by including it in the TCP.
Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia v
The World Bank team would like to recognize and
thank GASGI, especially Dr. Bandar Al-Muslmani, Asim
Ibrahim Al-Ghamdi, Syed Nisar Ul Haq, Mohammed Al-
Mabrook and Meshal Al-Qulaiti for their tireless efforts
and support. The team would also like to acknowledge
the excellent technical advice from other World Bank
colleagues, including Wael Zakout, Richard Damania,
Stephane Hallegatte, Martin Heger, Hisham Mahmoud
Fouad, Somik Lall and Jaafar Sadok Friaa. Finally, the
team would like to thank the World Bank GCC countries
management unit team, specially Issam A. Abousleiman,
Alexandra Pugachevsky, Suhail J. S. Jme’An, Yisgedullish
Amde, Hana Mahmoud Abo Al Samh, Shahd Sulaiman A.
Alhamdan and Abdulrahman Abdullah AlDeraibi.
The WB Team and GASGI also acknowledge all of
the participants who joined in technical meetings for
their contribution to the debate and their valuable
inputs. More specifically, the team thanks the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Education, Ministry of
Health, Ministry of Environment Water & Agriculture,
Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Transport, Ministry of
Economy and Planning, Ministry of Commerce, Ministry
of Municipalities and Rural Affairs, General Directorate
of Civil Defense, General Authority for Statistics, Saudi
Arabian General Investment Authority, Ministry of
Tourism, Saudi Post, Riyadh Chamber of Commerce,
Saudi Electricity Company, National Risk Unit, Royal
Commission for Riyadh City, Saudi Ports Authority,
Jeddah Islamic Port, King Abdulaziz Port Dammam and
Saudi Aramco.
 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Enthusiasm for geospatial data has increased across the past several years.1 This
makes sense, given that we are living in an era when billions of devices, products,
and assets are constantly producing and analyzing large amounts of information
(Kantor, 2017). This information includes location data, which can be harnessed to
provide essential historical, real-time, and predictive perspectives on human, societal,
environmental, or economic activities. Mapping, GPS, satellite imagery and other
geospatial technologies (Box ES.1) have developed into effective policy-making tools
and have transformed the way decisions are made, not only in the public sector but
also in the private sector and civil society.

Governments, organizations, and businesses that use, or provide geospatial

information are participants in a multi-billion-dollar industry made up of technology
and data providers, delivery platforms, and analytics services. Geospatial data
generated an estimated US$ 230 billion in worldwide revenue in 2016 (AlphaBeta,
2017). The geospatial industry was valued at an estimated US$ 339.0 billion in 2018
and was projected to reach US$ 439.2 billion by 2020, the equivalent of a growth rate

1
Through this report the use of geospatial data, geospatial information and geospatial information and technologies will be used interchangeably.

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia vii
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
of more than 13.8 percent per year (GeoBuiz, 2019). This
growth is due to continued technological innovation
in the industry, the increased democratization of
geospatial information, higher integration with
advancements in other complementary technologies,
and increasingly innovative business models (Geospatial
Industry Outlook & Readiness Index 2019). One single
example of this is that by early 2016, 39 countries
had “developed or operated at least one remote
sensing satellite, including government, university, and
commercial activities” (Borowitz, 2017, pg. 295). What
is more, a 2015 report by McKinsey Global Institute
estimated that the “Internet of Things” (systems and
sensors linking the physical world to a digital one)
has the potential to generate between US$ 4 and US
$11 trillion per year starting in 2025 (McKinsey Global
Institute, 2015).
Investing in Geospatial Information
Collecting, producing, and sharing geospatial data
generally requires significant effort and cost. The
United States (US) government spent US$ 1.4 billion
in 2019 fiscal year on defense GPS and US$ 96 million
on civil GPS augmentation (GPS.gov, 2019). Other US
public geospatial information projects with significant
budgets include the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA), which provides weather and
disaster maps (budget US$ 1.35 billion); and the US
Geological Survey (USGS), which provides topographic
and geological maps (budget US$ 859.7 million) (Office
of Management and Budget, 2018; U.S. Geological
Survey, 2018; Nagaraj, 2018). The European Union’s
budget for Copernicus (the EU’s Earth observation and
monitoring programme) is roughly 4.3 billion euros
for 2014-2020 (European Commission Memo, 2014).
These substantial investment costs must be justified
by outputs that reflect worthwhile benefits, such as
increased productivity, improved efficiency, or lower
operational costs. In the private sector, firms will invest
in Geospatial Information (GI) only when the expected
benefits exceed their costs. A product will therefore
viii Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
not be viable if the costs of data collection, processing,
dissemination, and management do not provide a
satisfactory return on investment. For example, a power
company in the southern US city of Chattanooga,
Tennessee, made a shift towards adopting smart grid
technology, which is fundamentally GI dependent. The
project reported significant operational annual savings,
in the form of meter reading (US$ 2m), field services
(US$ 0.7m), demand charges (US$ 3m) and cost
avoidance of post-storm outages (US$ 23m from just a
single severe storm) (Zeiss, 2019).
BOX ES.1: WHAT IS GEOSPATIAL INFORMATION?
Geospatial data refers to all information that
consists of a locational indicator and an attribute.
In fact, any piece of data (for example, the list
of all manufacturing plants in a given country)
could represent geospatial data if each field
contains a location indicator, such as a latitude
and longitude. A collection of such spatial data is
visually represented as a geographic map. Maps
can then take selected attributes attached to a
specific positional indicator (spatial data) and
pair it with a graphical illustration or visualization
(representation) (DiBiase, 2008). They can
therefore represent a vast array of spatial data
including weather forecasts, ocean topography,
rides in an amusement park or historical battlefield
locations (Nagaraj and Stern, 2020). More examples
of key geospatial information, inter alia, include
satellite imagery, population demographics,
transport networks, land cover, land uses and
cadasters, elevations and air pollution.
While geospatial information is most often
visualized in a map form, the topic of the study
will focus on the economics of data itself, as
well as the maps that are created as a result of
this information. For instance, the value of the
representation of geospatial information data (e.g.
maps) is not the same as the underlying data itself.
Yet, geospatial data do not exist in isolation—
they are produced by hardware and physical
technology (such as sensors, satellites, etc.) and
analyzed and processed using software (such as
QGIS or ArcMap). While these technologies are
essential parts of the GI industry, the economics
of such hardware and software follows a relatively
standard analysis used for technology in general.
 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

TO ENSURE ADEQUATE LEVELS OF INVESTMENT,

GOVERNMENTS SHOULD INCLUDE AN ANALYSIS OF
HOW GI INITIATIVES CAN CONTRIBUTE TO BROADER
STRATEGIC PLANS, AND CAREFULLY CONSIDER ANY
POTENTIAL SOCIOECONOMIC BENEFITS TO SOCIETY

While short-term financial profitability is often an Geospatial Information and the

important consideration for investment, this may not be
as relevant a factor for GI adoption in the public sector.
More important to public actors are the larger, broader
contributions that GI can make to the economy. This is
because governments must consider non-private, non-
pecuniary benefits of GI investments. These benefits
can come in many different forms, including improved
environmental benefits, reduced traffic congestion,
improved government decision making, support to
researchers, improved public safety, improved public
health, etc. While these benefits have significant value,
they are not easily monetized and thus a government’s
calculation for weighing costs and benefits is more
complex than that of a private firm (Genovese et al,
2010). Take the previous example of Chattanooga. The
power company is a municipally owned utility that
does not just deliver electricity: it also aims to promote
economic development and enhance quality of life
for its customers. In its decision to invest in building a
smart grid, the company gave weight to benefits from
enhanced reliability (a 65 percent reduction in customer
outages and a 52 percent reduction in the average
length of outages) and the environmental benefits
of reducing CO2 emissions by 3,400 tons/year (from
reduced truck mileage, demand management and
power factor improvement).
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030
In 2016, The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) announced
Vision 2030—an ambitious and forward-looking plan
to diversify the country’s economy and transition away
from a primarily extractives-based economy. Vision
2030 is a long-term strategic blueprint that capitalizes
on the Kingdom’s unique strengths and capabilities to
place itself at the heart of the Arab and Islamic world, to
become a global investment powerhouse, to stimulate
the economy and diversify revenues, and to become a
global hub connecting three continents.
Geospatial Information will play a key role in achieving
Vision 2030 because it is fundamental to providing a
consistent, authoritative evidence base that enhances
decision making and policy development, facilitates
implementation and longer-term monitoring,
and reduces the cost of government operations.
Moreover, as technology‑driven trends become
increasingly ubiquitous in and impactful on our
daily lives, they will create previously unimaginable
amounts of location‑referenced information, leading
to a questioning of our very understanding of what
constitutes geospatial information.

To ensure adequate levels of investment, governments

should include an analysis of how GI initiatives can
contribute to broader strategic plans, and carefully
consider any potential socioeconomic benefits
to society in their identification, evaluation, and
consideration of such initiatives (Davies, 1996).

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia ix
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
GI will undoubtedly underpin the Vision 2030
implementation and thus, the KSA GI sector will
need to be prepared. KSA is currently a heavy user of
geospatial data, especially across the Government and
within the oil and gas, utilities, and telecommunications
sectors. It has a growing GI sector, providing a range of
services including software and solutions development,
consumer services, and cartographic services, as well
as providing support within the Kingdom to major
multinational players. Nevertheless, the business
capacity of the geospatial sector in KSA is relatively
limited and currently only comprises a small fraction of
the local market. Advancements continue to be made
to develop the sector, including efforts to increase its
skilled workforce, improve research and development
capabilities, and reduce operational costs.
Regionally, KSA has established itself as a leader in
the rapid growth of the geospatial analytics market.
Overseen primarily by the General Authority for Survey
and Geospatial Information (GASGI), the geospatial
information sector in KSA is growing at the regional and
municipal levels as well. Individual jurisdictions have the
authority to implement GI initiatives of their own, which
has led to the development of smaller-scale, regionally
centralized GI systems that have begun to receive
international recognition (Alsultan & Rahman, 2015).
x Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
Like many other countries, the Kingdom is working
toward the creation of a national strategy for the
geospatial sector. The Kingdom’s vision is to establish an
“active and integrated survey and geospatial information
sector that supports sustainable development and
meets the requirements of the government sector
as well as other stakeholders with precision, high
quality and reliability”. This strategy aims to recognize
geospatial information and technologies as essential
national infrastructure that not only enables but also
underpins national sustainable development initiatives,
as demonstrated by international best practices.
The economic benefits of GI
for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
GASGI has begun its oversight of the geospatial sector
in the country with an examination of whether investing
in GI will benefit the Kingdom. To support this effort,
GASGI asked the World Bank to carry out a study
that estimates the economic benefits that investments
in Geospatial Information and Technologies could
contribute to the economy of Saudi Arabia, with a special
focus on key sectors/dimensions according to the KSA
Vision 2030, including Infrastructure (Roads), Energy,
Health, Education, Public Safety and Security, Disaster
Risk Management (Box ES.2), and Commerce (Ports).
The study also aims to address critical gaps in
the geospatial literature, in particular the lack of a
systematic and economically grounded framework to
understand what geospatial data is, what its benefits
are, how it affects decision making, and what the role of
governments and public policy should be in regulating
its production and dissemination. Indeed, even basic
issues such as the definition of geospatial data and
how it differs from other kinds of data remain poorly
understood in the policy context. In response, the WB
team has created an analytical framework to allow for a
KSA-specific partial equilibrium analysis that simulates
the impact of introducing Geospatial Information and
Technologies (GIT) in priority areas identified in the KSA
Vision 2030, and in which GI is not currently being used in
the Kingdom and where it could deliver the most value.
 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

BOX ES.2: WHAT ARE THE ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF AN EARLY WARNING SYSTEM?

Using floods as an example, an Early
Warning System (EWS) collects location-
specific data at weather monitoring
stations using sensors whose signals are transmitted
by cellphones, radios, or satellites and retrieved
by specialized geographic information system
(GIS) software. This data is stored and shared on
the geospatial information platform. Custom tools
then evaluate readings and assess potential flood
conditions. An effective flood warning system is vital
for reducing the time needed to detect hazards and
notify the public on how to respond to a threat. It
also gives people more time to move outside of the
flood zone, elevate assets to higher ground, or find
other ways to protect their property.
Flash floods triggered by torrential rainfall are the
most frequent source of disasters in KSA. Two major
floods occurred in Jeddah city in 2009 and 2011. In
each case, heavy rainfall lasted approximately three
hours, causing extensive flooding. The flooding in
2009 had an official death toll of 153 people, injured
a further 238 people, and damaged over 11,000
residential buildings (official numbers regarding
the 2011 flood are not available). Momani and
Fadil (2010) found that the 2009 Jeddah floods
results in a loss of about US$ 2.2 billion (US$ 800
million of direct monetary loss and US$ 1.4 billion
in long installation and government facilities, and
compensation for those affected).
The study estimated the avoidable cost of
damages from a potential 25-year flood if an EWS
is established. This analysis followed a three-step
process: 1) estimation of the probability of future
flood events and damages based on past flood
data in the Kingdom and a model from the World
Resource Institute, 2) adjustment of these estimates
to account for climate change and economic growth
using estimated GDP growth rates and climate
change impact models; and 3) estimation of the
degree to which damage could be reduced with
an Early Flood Warning System, using a model
developed by the Flood Hazard Research Centre
(FHRC) of Middlesex University in the UK. As an
outcome, nine scenarios were calculated from the
resulting combinations of three potential damages
scenarios from the largest storm that could occur in
KSA every 25 years and three potential cost savings
scenarios from installing an EWS in the KSA. The full
range of benefits is estimated to range from US$
3.8 million to US$ 47.8 million per year.

The following table summarizes the ranges of estimated has been evaluated through meetings with key sector
benefits that geospatial information and technologies stakeholder and it is assumed that if the use cases were
might be expected to deliver for KSA. These benefits not implemented, the future scenario will be the same as
were estimated by using data provided directly by KSA the current one (counterfactual).
government ministries and agencies. It must be noted
that economic models generally rest on a number of
restrictive assumptions or may, out of necessity, not
include factors that are relevant to the subject under
consideration. GI estimation is not exempt from this. To
calculate the economic benefits of GI in KSA, several
caveats, limitations, and basic assumptions must be
noted, including: a) the benefit estimations are based on
simulating the implementation of select GIT use cases
that could be implemented in the near future, rather
than use cases that currently exist in the Kingdom; b)
it is assumed that the estimated benefits could only be
achieved with the adoption of GIT, and thus 100 percent
of benefits are attributed to it; and c) the current state
of GI in KSA for the economic sectors chosen (baseline)

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia xi
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

SUMMARY OF ESTIMATED BENEFITS FROM GI BY SECTOR USE CASE

SECTOR US$ PER YEAR

DISASTER RISK MANAGEMENT 3.8 million – 47.8 million

EDUCATION  63 million – 239 million

ENERGY  564 million

COMMERCE  56.2 – 122 million

PUBLIC SAFETY  2.1 billion – 3.9 billion

PUBLIC HEALTH  1.6 billion – 3.2 billion

INFRASTRUCTURE 1.5 billion – 2.6 billion

Source: Authors’ calculations

The Future of GI in Saudi Arabia According to GASGI, a number of factors currently

As Geospatial Information provides significant benefits
for consumers, businesses, and society overall, it is
useful to consider the different dimensions through
which governments can become geospatially enabled
and help to maximize these benefits. GASGI has
decided that the best mechanism to accomplish
this is by promoting the vital and integrative role of
geospatial information and by developing related
enabling architectures. One such example are Spatial
Data Infrastructures (SDIs), which, in the broadest
definition, include not only ICT technologies but also
the mechanisms for communication and coordination
among such technologies, as well as the policies,
standards, and human resources necessary to acquire,
process, store, distribute, and use geospatial data.
At their best, SDIs reduce redundancy in geospatial
data creation and maintenance, reduce the costs of
geospatial data creation and maintenance, improve
access to geospatial data, and improve the accuracy
of geospatial data used by the broader community
(National Research Council, 2001).
limit the emergence of a highly competitive Geospatial
Ecosystem in KSA (GCS, 2018):
• Investment in geospatial technologies in KSA is not
always optimized.
• Government procurement for geospatial products
and services may not always deliver good value for
money, does not always achieve the desired outcome,
and does not adequately recognize the specialized
geospatial expertise and skill levels often required,
especially for national investment projects where
geospatial services are a major component.
• National geospatial products and services are often
disconnected, with a lack of standardization and the
production of multiple versions of similar datasets and
products, resulting in duplication and inefficient use of
KSA resources.
• Investment into online and accessible geospatial
services is low except for single organization
geospatial portals.

xii Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

• Government investment in geospatial products and

services does not have adequate coordination and
quality assurance.

• Collaboration and the cost sharing of geospatial

related expenditures is low, resulting in duplicated
efforts and additional costs to government.

• There is a lack of ongoing professional skill

development programs to increase and maintain
Saudi national expertise for geospatial technologies
and services.

• There are limited mechanisms for the recognition

of certified geospatial professionals and businesses
within KSA.
• No clear strategy exists for the priority areas of
investment into geospatial research, technologies and
services within KSA
In this context, GASGI has a significant role to play
when determining policy around geospatial information.
Moreover, since technologies change so rapidly, GASGI
will need to be at the policy-making frontier and stand
ready to deal with issues such as data ownership and
control, data privacy and security, accountability and
public data openness, market regulation, and even
equity and income distribution. GASGI will need to build
the appropriate mechanisms and institutions to support
growth and innovation by working with major public
and private sector data holders to identify barriers to
sharing data, and promote frameworks that allow safe,
fair and equitable data sharing between organizations.
However, they will also need to be vigilant that this
GI ecosystem would not serve to concentrate power
within the hands of a few large businesses, and stifle the
innovation, quality, and value for money that that results
from effective competition and disruption.
Given the potential sizable economic benefits,
GASGI should continue with its plans to develop the
GIT sector, and to establish a mutually beneficial
partnership between government and private sector
actors to further the prospective investments into
the Survey and Geospatial Information sector. The
private sector can deliver the desired benefits of speed,
accuracy and quality. But it is important to remember
that a GI ecosystem that underpins the national
development agenda will require governments to
facilitate competitive environments for the provision
of geospatial information. In addition, GASGI not only
needs to play the role of providing or facilitating GI,
it also needs to embrace and encourage the use of GI
across the KSA government in a way that is efficient and
equitable, and that improves infrastructure and service
delivery, levels-up communities and lagging regions,
monitors and controls greenhouse emissions, prepares
for next generation technologies such as self-driving/
autonomous vehicles, increases community resilience,
and strengthens food security.

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia xiii
1
 INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION
Location information, also known professionally as Geospatial Information (GI), is
fundamental to providing a consistent, authoritative evidence base that enhances
decision making and policy development, facilitates implementation and longer-term
monitoring, and reduces the cost of regional and national government operations. It
is transforming the way decisions are made, in both the private sector, where it can
help improve the efficiency of a vehicle fleet, and the public sector, where it informs
decisions made by governments, from urban planning to infrastructure placement for
public utilities.

It is widely accepted that the use of Geospatial Information and Technologies (GIT)2
provides sizeable benefits for consumers, businesses, and society overall. Yet, to
maximize benefits from GIT and become geospatially enabled, governments first
need to understand the vital and integrative role of geospatial information and related
enabling architectures, such as National Spatial Data Infrastructures (NSDIs). In
addition, national policies, and technical capacities and capabilities, need to be better
aligned and considerably strengthened. Finally, there needs to be more institutional
collaboration, interoperability, and integration across the existing national data
information systems and platforms, particularly those related to people and places
(i.e., statistical, administrative, environmental, geological).

2
Through this report the use of geospatial data, geospatial information and geospatial information and technologies will be used interchangeably.

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 1
INTRODUCTION

This report aims to estimate the potential economic

KSA is a heavy user of geospatial data, especially
across Government and within the oil and gas, utilities,
and telecommunications sectors. Its growing GIT
sector provides a range of services including software
and solutions development, consumer services and
cartographic services. The GIT sector also provides
support within the Kingdom to major multinational
players across industries. Like many other countries, the
Kingdom is working towards the creation of a national
strategy for the geospatial sector. This will include the
development of a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI)
that works collaboratively across multiple government
agencies to support the Saudi Vision 2030 and prioritize
the most critical investment needs. During the work
on this report, it became clear to both the authors and
stakeholders within the Kingdom that an estimate of the
economic and social benefits of investing in GIT would
be essential to justifying funding for the implementation
of the National Strategy. This is because, to date, there
has been no definitive study which examines the size
and scale of the sector and its economic impact on the
GDP of the Kingdom.
value that GIT could contribute to the economy of
the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with special focus
on key sectors identified by the Saudi Vision 2030,
including Infrastructure (Roads), Energy, Health,
Education, Public Safety and Security, Disaster Risk
Management, and Commerce (Ports). Section 1 supplies
a brief introduction of the Saudi Arabian context and
highlights the primary motivations of this study. Section
2 addresses the economics of geospatial information
and discusses the role that government can play in
its collection and distribution. Section 3 expands on
the paper’s methodology, and section 4 estimates the
benefits of geospatial to each of the identified economic
sectors. Finally, section 5 provides concluding remarks
and recommendations for future research.
SAUDI VISION 2030
Across the past eight decades, KSA has achieved
considerable progress in its social, political and economic
indicators, thanks in part to bold and ambitious policy
objectives put forth by the government.
KSA’s economy is the largest in the Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC), with an estimated GDP of US$ 782.5
billion in 2018, followed by United Arab Emirates (US$
414.2) and Kuwait (US$ 141.7).3 KSA has the largest
proven oil reserves in the world and is the largest global
oil producer. This notwithstanding, KSA has managed to
increase the share of the services sector and is looking
at diversifying its revenue streams.

3
World Bank national accounts data. https://data.worldbank.org/

2 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia

OVERSEEN PRIMARILY BY THE GENERAL AUTHORITY
FOR SURVEY AND GEOSPATIAL INFORMATION,
THE GI SECTOR IN KSA IS ALSO GROWING AT THE
REGIONAL AND MUNICIPAL LEVELS.
The structure of the economy in recent years has shown
the effectiveness of policies to expand the services
and non-oil revenue sectors. Between 2015 and 2018,
non-oil revenues as a share of GDP increased by nearly
3 percent. The manufacturing sector added value stood
at 13 percent in 2018, and at 48 percent for the services
sector. Oil constituted the bulk of the industrial value
added; roughly 49 percent of the industrial value added
was driven by oil in the period from 2009-2018.
There are potential opportunities for the Saudi economy
to grow and sustain fiscal, economic and social targets
as envisaged in the Vision 2030. KSA aspires to emerge
as a preeminent player in the GCC region in the next
two decades as a major trade, energy, and services hub.
The vision will be realized by reliance on entrepreneurial
skills and talent, strategic location, open and diverse
society, and modern infrastructure. The private sector
is envisaged to be the main engine for the anticipated
transformation.
As part of the Vision 2030 journey, several key economic
sectors were identified, including Commerce, Tourism,
Infrastructure, Energy, Health, Education, Public
Safety and Disaster Risk Management. The continued
growth of these eight sectors is central to many of the
important socio-economic policy areas prioritized by
the government in the Saudi Vision 2030 initiative.
These sectors are expected to enhance KSA’s market,
strengthen sustainable economic growth and help shift
away from oil dependence. To reinforce this path, in
January 2021 HRH Mohammed Bin Salam - Crown Prince
launched a new five-year strategy for the Kingdom’s
sovereign wealth fund, with the intention of furthering
the Government’s reform ambition in developing the
non-oil economy, enabling the private sector and
supporting the localization of sectors, and building
strategic economic partnerships.4
4
PIF Launches Five-Year Strategy Including Vision Realization Program 2021-2025 https://www.pif.gov.sa/en/MediaCenter/Pages/NewsDetails.
aspx?NewsID=64
5
The General Authority for Survey and Geospatial Information is the WB’s main counterpart for this report and it is mandated to function as the
national regulator, supervisor, and monitor of the geospatial sector in KSA (http://www.gasgi.gov.sa)
Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 3
INTRODUCTION
GEOSPATIAL SECTOR IN KSA
The geospatial sector in KSA has grown significantly
across the past decade. KSA has established itself
as one of the countries leading the rapid growth of
the geospatial analytics market. Overseen primarily
by the General Authority for Survey and Geospatial
Information (GASGI)5, the geospatial information sector
in KSA is also growing at the regional and municipal
levels. Individual jurisdictions have the authority to
implement GI initiatives of their own, which has led to
the development of smaller-scale, regionally centralized
GI systems that have begun to receive international
recognition (Alsultan & Rahman, 2015). Private firms in
KSA make up an increasingly significant part of the GI
landscape in the country, completing notable GI projects
such as the Al Madinah Spatial Data Infrastructure
(NSDI) at Madinah Development Authority, the E-Dig
Application for Jeddah Municipality, and the King
Abdullah Project for Waad Al-Shamaal Industrial City.
The Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi ARAMCO) was
an early adopter of GI in the country and currently
utilizes GI in many of its assets including wells, pipelines,
and utility networks across the country (Alsultan &
Rahman, 2015). The Ministry of Health has developed
a GI-supported “e-portal” that provides patients with
information and map-based guidance to access health
facilities and other map queries (Saudi Arabia Ministry
of Health). Nevertheless, the business capacity of
the geospatial sector in KSA is relatively limited and
currently only comprises a small fraction of the local
market. Efforts to develop the sector are ongoing,
including growing its skilled workforce, improving
research and development capabilities, and reducing
the business costs of operation. Demand for geospatial
INTRODUCTION
products and services is high and continues to grow,
even while public awareness of the industry remains
relatively low. GI services also offer possibilities for the
development of other related industries such as land
and asset management, both of which stand to benefit
from a maturing geospatial sector.
To date, the geospatial industry in KSA has been subject
to relatively little economic assessment but the country’s
capacity to develop the industry is substantial (GCS,
2018). KSA Vision 2030 provides an opportunity to build
on this capacity, because the economic sectors that
offer the most potential for GI adoption are consistent
with many of the objectives outlined in the initiative.
These includes more efficient transportation systems,
modern cities, and a strong emphasis on technological
innovation.
GENERAL AUTHORITY FOR
SURVEY AND GEOSPATIAL
INFORMATION (GASGI)
The survey and geospatial information sector in
Saudi Arabia is guided by the KSA Vision 2030, which
envisions modern Saudi Arabia as ”the heart of the Arab
and Islamic worlds, the investment powerhouse, and
the hub connecting three continents” and its aspiration
as ”an ambitious nation” that is building ”a vibrant
society” and ”a thriving economy”. The availability
of authoritative, standards-based, and high-quality
location information is a key enabler for supporting the
Kingdom’s efforts towards its Vision 2030 aspirations.
4 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
Turning to GIT specifically, the Kingdom’s vision is
to establish an “active and integrated survey and
geospatial information sector that supports sustainable
development and meets the requirements of [the]
government sector as well as other stakeholders with
precision, high quality and reliability”. Such positioning
intends to recognize geospatial information and
technologies as essential national infrastructure that not
only enables but also underpins national sustainable
development initiatives, which is in keeping with
international best practices.
To this end, the Kingdom has designated GASGI—
the General Authority for Survey and Geospatial
Information—as the national regulator, supervisor, and
monitor of the geospatial sector in KSA. To fulfill its
mandate, GASGI aims to:
• Establish and update the fundamental rules, standards
and guidelines for the sector, and to achieve
integrated use of the geospatial information system
among stakeholder agencies that adheres in a uniform
way to established standards;
• Adopt and develop a national geospatial
infrastructure via a national geospatial platform,
which is a portal for accessing data, products, services
and electronic applications pertinent to the national
geodetic reference, the national geodetic networks,
hydrographic surveys, topographic and aerial maps,
and hydrographic navigational charts;
• Strengthen cooperation between national
stakeholders of the sector to ensure the accuracy,
currency, and availability of geospatial information;
• Develop the sectors’ financial and human resources
via strategic plans that ensure the effective use of
available resources and innovation, in order to enable
sustainable national development activities guided by
international best practices;
• Protect the interests of the sector’s beneficiaries by
licensing sector-specific activities, supervising the
qualification and classification of practitioners, and
establishing regulations thereof.

One of GASGI’s strategic initiatives is to develop a
competitive environment for the provision of survey
and geospatial data, products, and services that:
• Establishes clarity regarding the role and
responsibilities of the national regulator, on the one
hand, and an operating entity, on the other, for the
provision of geospatial data, products, and services
• Identifies and explores the potential for investment
opportunities in the sector
• Promotes rationalization of investments into “fit
for use” products and services for all sectors of
the country
• Contributes to the continuous increase in the
number of qualified professionals as well as
businesses in the sector
Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 5
INTRODUCTION
This study to estimate the impact of geospatial
information in terms of economic value to the Kingdom
is a part of the above-mentioned strategic initiative,
and contributes to GASGI’s continued analysis of the
Kingdom’s full potential for embracing geospatial
technology. It aims to provide a KSA-specific estimation,
which focuses on the priority areas identified in the
KSA Vision 2030, and which is augmented by the
inputs provided by relevant national stakeholders in
the Kingdom.
INTRODUCTION
STUDY MOTIVATION
Governments, organizations, and businesses supporting
geospatial information form a global multi-billion-
dollar industry consisting of technology providers, data
providers, delivery platforms, and analytics services.
Geospatial data generated an estimated US$ 230
billion in worldwide revenue in 2016 (AlphaBeta, 2017).
The geospatial industry was valued at an estimated
US$ 339.0 billion in 2018 and was projected to reach
US$ 439.2 billion by 2020, which is equivalent to
a growth rate of more than 13.8 percent per year
(GeoBuiz, 2018). This accelerated growth is due to
continuous technological advancements in the industry,
democratization of geospatial information, increased
6 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
integration with advancements in digital technologies,
and increasingly innovative business models (Geospatial
Industry Outlook & Readiness Index 2019).
Collecting, producing and sharing geospatial data
generally requires significant effort and cost. The
US government spent US$ 1.4 billion in fiscal year
2019 on defense GPS and US$ 96 million on civil
GPS augmentation (GPS.gov, 2019). Other US public
geospatial information projects with significant
budgets include the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA), which provides weather and
disaster maps (budget US$ 1.35 billion) and the US
Geological Survey (USGS), which provides topographic
and geological maps (budget US$ 859.7 million) (Office
of Management and Budget, 2018; U.S. Geological
Survey, 2018) (Nagaraj, 2018). The European Union’s
 INTRODUCTION

MORE IMPORTANT TO PUBLIC ACTORS ARE

THE LARGER, BROADER CONTRIBUTIONS
THAT GI CAN MAKE TO THE ECONOMY OF A
COUNTRY OR REGION.

budget for Copernicus (the EU’s Earth observation and
monitoring programme) was roughly 4.3 billion euros
for 2014-2020 (European Commission Memo, 2014).
These substantial investment costs must be justified by
outputs that reflect significant benefits—be that in the
form of increased productivity, improved efficiency, or
lower operational costs.
In the private sector, it is anticipated that firms will
make decisions to invest in geospatial information
investments only when the expected revenues exceed
their costs. A product will therefore not be viable if
the costs of data collection, processing, dissemination,
and management do not provide a satisfactory return
on investment. While short-term financial profitability
is often an important consideration for investment,
this may not be as relevant a factor for GI adoption in
the public sphere. More important to public actors are
the larger, broader contributions that GI can make to
the economy of a country or region.6 This is because
governments must consider non-private, non-pecuniary
benefits of GI investments. These benefits can come in
many different forms, including improved environmental
benefits, reduced traffic, improved government decision
making, support to researchers, improved public safety,
improved public health, etc. While these benefits
have significant value, they are rarely monetized and
therefore a government’s calculation for weighing costs
and benefits are more complex than those of a firm
(Genovese et al, 2010).
To ensure proper investment levels, governments should
also identify, evaluate, and consider GI initiatives that
can contribute to a strategic plan or vision and carefully
consider any potential socioeconomic benefits to the
society (Davies, 1996). This is precisely what GASGI has
been mandated to do. As the KSA public organization
charged with organizing the geospatial sector in the
country, GASGI has begun with an examination of
whether investing in GIT will be of any economic benefit
to the Kingdom and requested the support of the World
Bank in this analysis.
Saudi Arabia and the World Bank have been in
partnership since 1974, when the Kingdom signed a
Technical Cooperation Program (TCP) Agreement
establishing the World Bank office in Riyadh. The Saudi
Reimbursable Advisory Services (RAS) program is the
oldest and the largest RAS program in the World Bank.
Under the TCP agreement, upon request by the KSA
Ministry of Finance, the World Bank brings technical
expertise and global knowledge in support of the
government’s development agenda to counterpart
entities. The engagements focus on strengthening
institutional capacity within the government entities
and assisting in developing legislation and policies. In
this context and more specifically, KSA asked the World
Bank to carry out a study to estimate the economic
value that geospatial information and technologies
could potentially contribute to the economy of Saudi
Arabia, with special focus on key sectors/dimensions
according to the Saudi Vision 2030, including
Infrastructure (Roads), Energy, Health, Education, Public
Safety and Security, Disaster Risk Management, and
Commerce (Ports).

6
There are at least four reasons for this: 1) project boundary in financial and economic profitability is likely to be different; 2) market prices may
underestimate economic benefits in cases where consumer’s surplus is significant; 3) a project may have influences that work outside the GI
market resulting in externalities; and 4) distortions in the policy environment that affect prices (taxes and subsidies). “Public Investment Criteria:
Financial and Economic Internal Rates of Return”. Asian Development Bank, April 1990.

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 7
2
 THE ECONOMICS OF GEOSPATIAL DATA

THE ECONOMICS
OF GEOSPATIAL DATA
In recent years, there has been an increased enthusiasm for geospatial data. In an
era when billions of devices, products and assets are producing and analyzing
information (Kantor, 2017), location data can be harnessed to provide essential
historical, real-time, as well as predictive perspectives on human, societal,
environmental or economic activities. GI or geospatial data provides the “where
factor” (or the locational context) that facilitates and improves problem solving and
decision making. Mapping, GPS, satellite imagery and other geospatial technologies
have developed into effective policy-making tools and have transformed the way
decisions are made, not only in the public sector but also in the private sector and
civil society.

Despite of all the interest and advances, there is a missing piece: a systematic and
economically grounded framework to understand what geospatial data is, what its
benefits are, how it affects decision making and what the role of governments and
public policy should be in regulating its production and dissemination. Indeed, even
basic questions such as how geospatial data is defined and how it differs from other
kinds of data remain less understood in the policy context. Hence, the World Bank
carried out a thorough literature review, designed a simple economic analytical
framework, and developed a methodology to estimate GI benefits for the KSA

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 9
THE ECONOMICS OF GEOSPATIAL DATA

economy that is intended not only for this study but also
to be used or replicated in other regions. Throughout
this report, both the economic framework and GI
benefits estimation methodology are presented and
explained in a common-sense and accessible style. For
an in-depth study of the subject matter, the authors
recommend reading the background paper7 that was
written to complement this report.
In this chapter, geospatial information is first clearly
defined, and a brief overview of the economics of
geospatial data is provided. Next, a classification
structure for the types of geospatial data is proposed
and a use case analysis illustrates the importance of
GIT. This is followed by an explanation of the primary
theory underpinning the value of geospatial information.
The chapter concludes with a discussion of the role of
governments in the storage and provision of geospatial
information, and a summary of the main points in the
ongoing debate over private versus public provision of
geospatial data.
WHAT IS GEOSPATIAL
INFORMATION?
Geospatial data is all information that consists of
a locational indicator and an attribute. In fact, any
piece of data, for example the list of all manufacturing
plants in a given country, could represent geospatial
data if each field contains a location indicator, such as
a latitude and longitude. A collection of such spatial
data is visually represented as a geographic map. Maps,
therefore, take selected attributes attached to a specific
positional indicator (spatial data) and pair them with a
graphical illustration or visualization (representation)
(DiBiase, 2008). They can therefore represent a vast
array of spatial data including weather forecasts, ocean
topography, rides in an amusement park or historical
battlefield locations (Nagaraj and Stern, 2020). More
examples of key geospatial information, inter alia,
include satellite imagery, population demographics,
transport networks, land cover, land uses and cadasters,
elevations and air pollution.8
While geospatial information is most often visualized
in a map form, this section will focus on the economics
of data itself, and not only of the maps that are
created as a result of this information. For instance,
the value of geospatial information data presented in
some form (e.g. maps) is not the same as that of the
underlying data itself. Yet, geospatial data don’t exist in
isolation—they are produced by hardware and physical
technology (such as sensors, satellites, etc.) and
analyzed and processed using software (such as QGIS
or ArcMap)9. While these technologies are essential
parts of the GI industry, the economics of such hardware
and software follow a relatively standard analysis used
for technology in general. Our focus is therefore on
the special economics of geospatial data itself, which
remains an elusive topic, for both practitioners and
policy makers.

7
This section builds heavily from Barra et al. (2020), a technical background paper to this report.
8
The UN committee on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM) is the UN body tasked with making joint decisions and setting
directions with regard to the production, availability and use of geospatial information within national, regional and global policy frameworks.
They have identified 14 fundamental themes of geospatial data, which include: Addresses, Buildings and settlements, Elevation and depth,
Functional areas, Geographical names, Geology and soils, Land cover and land use, Land parcels, Ortho-imagery, Physical infrastructure, Population
distribution, Transport networks, Water, and a Geographic Reference Framework.
9
It is important to distinguish between geospatial information (GI) and geographic information systems (GIS). A GIS is a framework for gathering,
managing, and analyzing data. Rooted in the science of geography, GIS integrates many types of data. It analyzes spatial location and organizes
layers of information into visualizations using maps and 3D scenes. (ESRI, 2020; https://www.esri.com/en-us/what-is-gis/overview).

10 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia

There are many ways to classify geospatial data. One
simple framework would be to divide geospatial data
into that which describes (a) physical geography, (b)
demographic information and/or (c) economic activity.
In other words, a space is represented by its land, its
people, and the socio-economic activity that occurs
therein, and geospatial data captures information on
all three of these elements.
Physical geography encompasses natural landscape
features and physical infrastructure, such as mountain
ranges, bodies of water, bridges, highways, forests,
farmland, weather and climate, and buildings (offices,
storefronts, and homes). In the US, the Geological
Survey (USGS) is responsible for the collection and
dissemination of such topographical information, and
the European Union is working to develop a spatial data
infrastructure under the INSPIRE Directive. The European
Spatial Data Infrastructure “will enable the sharing
of environmental spatial information among public
sector organizations, facilitate public access to spatial
information across Europe, and assist in policy-making
across boundaries” (INSPIRE Knowledge Base, 2020).
Demographic information is essentially information
about human (and non-human) populations that can
be tied to a household or general location. Examples of
demographics include population density, race/ethnicity,
age, education, health indicators, political preferences,
and religious affiliation. Such information is usually
captured in decennial censuses in a variety of different
countries, as well as the “long form surveys” and other
similar efforts conducted in the US, by the Census Bureau.
TABLE 1: EXAMPLES OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF REGIONAL GIS DATA
Physical Geography Demography
Land
GROUND UP Census
Surveys
Remote-sensing Urban land-cover
TOP DOWN
satellites e.g. Landsat aerial maps
Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 11
THE ECONOMICS OF GEOSPATIAL DATA
Finally, economic activity captures geospatial
information about commerce, such as geographic
markets, revenues, potential sites for investment, or new
markets. In the US, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS),
for example, collects information on the Consumer
Price Index (CPI) for four broad geographic regions that
provides the public and businesses with a measure of
inflation for different regions at regular time intervals.
An alternative way to conceptualize geospatial
information is by the technology used to collect
it. At first glance, many technologies are used to
create geospatial data. These “technologies” include
humans such as land surveyors, census takers, aerial
photographers, police, and even the general public with
GPS-enabled cell phones. The attributes of the collected
data, such as land use information, demographics,
landscape features, or crime scene observations, can
be entered manually or, in the case of a land survey
map, digitized from a map format to a digital format by
electronic scanning. Similarly, geospatial data can also
be collected by technologies such as remote sensing
satellites and aerial drones/airplanes which can be
processed to produce maps of land cover and land use
(Folger, 2011). One relatively useful way of grouping
GIS data is therefore “ground up”—largely human-
based methods of collecting data (land surveyors,
census taker, crowd-sourcing), or “top down”—
technological methods (aerial photography and
remote sensing with airplanes, satellites, drones).
Economy
Consumer
Price Index
Night-time
satellite imagery
THE ECONOMICS OF GEOSPATIAL DATA
GEOSPATIAL DATA OFTEN HAVE VALUE
ALONG MULTIPLE DIMENSIONS AND
MEASURE MULTIPLE ELEMENTS OF A REGION
Given the resources required to gather geospatial
information, it’s necessary to understand why such
data is important and what possible applications
might be. Each different type of geospatial data plays
a role in informing decision making and serves a
variety of use cases. Physical geospatial data is used
for mining, construction, urban planning, climate
policy, transportation, and distribution networks. For
example, a mining firm might use geological information
gathered from aerial imagery to decide on the location
of an exploration project or plan the design of a mine.
Similarly, global positioning systems (GPS) can be used
for vehicle tracking and dispatch to expedite schedules
(Behm et al, 2018).
Demographic geospatial data is used for federal
government budgeting, policy research, business,
and investment decisions. The US uses census-level
information about population to determine how much
money specific geographic areas receive from the
federal government (i.e. “a large number of federal
spending programs depend on local population levels”)
(Suárez, Serrato and Wingender, 2016). Such data also
have public health applications. Geospatial data is used
in the detection and geo-location of garbage (such
as waste tire piles in Africa), which are a significant
breeding ground for disease-carrying mosquitoes
(Behm et al, 2018) and need immediate attention, or to
detect hazards such as algae blooms in tourist locations
(Bloudoff-Indelicato, 2019).
12 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
Economic geospatial data is also used for policy
research, to guide investment decisions, and for many
other uses. Labor statistics, for example, might drive
the policy platforms of political candidates. Investors
also value the economic data surrounding “real estate
or land holdings tied to a particular investment” (Behm
et al, 2018). Hedge funds and other investors are using
satellite imagery to track the number of cars in the
parking lots of retail establishments to predict revenues
before they are publicly announced, offering them a
competitive advantage and financial gain in the capital
markets (Katona et al, 2018; Zhu, 2019).
Further, while different ways of classifying data exist,
these categories are not independent or mutually
exclusive. In fact, oftentimes different types of data
are more valuable together. Geospatial data often
have value along multiple dimensions and measure
multiple elements of a region. They can therefore
be combined and used in creative ways to solve
business and economic problems. An entrepreneur
may use “socioeconomic data as well as information
like traffic patterns, foot traffic, and the number of
residences in the area” to choose the next location
of a business (Behm et al, 2018). A retailer’s data on
“income, housing/rent prices, surrounding business
performance, population, and customer age” all
contribute to decisions about the brands and products
they will carry (Behm et al, 2018). Similarly, different
types of geospatial data are also vital to inform policy
and academic research. In a recent study into Landsat-
enabled academic research, it was found that scientific
research using Landsat satellite imagery covers a variety
of topics including “glacier retreat, urban expansion,
population movements, deforestation, mining impacts
(i.e. tar sands development, mountaintop removal),
hydropower plant impacts, desert irrigation, agriculture
expansion, shrinking bodies of water (i.e. Aral Sea, Lake
Urmia), fires (i.e. oil fires, forest fires), volcanic eruptions,
hurricane flooding and other land use change studies”
(Nagaraj, Shears, de Vaan, 2020).

In some ways, all of these examples are just the very
beginning of understanding and clarifying the major use
cases for these kinds of data. It is expected that many
more creative applications for geospatial data will arise
in the future. For example, in a recent paper that used
geospatial data gathered from millions of cellphones,
Chen et al (2019) quantified a racial disparity in voting
wait times across a nationwide sample of polling places
during the 2016 US presidential election. They found
that relative to entirely white neighborhoods, residents
of entirely black neighborhoods waited 29 percent
longer to vote and were 74 percent more likely to spend
more than 30 minutes at their polling place. Such
creative and socially impactful uses of geospatial data
will undoubtedly grow exponentially in the future.
THE VALUE OF
GEOSPATIAL INFORMATION
Having defined what geospatial data is and some of
its potential applications, this paper now turns to the
question of placing a value on geospatial information.
This section presents a theoretical exposition of the
value of geospatial data, and then examines empirical
methods to value such information.
10
While the example may be simplistic, it can be applied to more complex examples of geospatial information uses at a national level, such as
temperature forecasts for a state-run utility, geological images for resource mining, urbanization data for economic budgeting, etc.
Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 13
THE ECONOMICS OF GEOSPATIAL DATA
The central tenet of decision theory is that information
has no inherent value—its value lies in its use in a
decision. Geospatial information is valuable only
insofar as it creates value by improving a decision-
making process. For example, knowing whether it will
rain or not in a given city or neighborhood on a given
day is valuable only if it affects one’s decision about
whether or not to bring an umbrella to work. If one is
going to bring an umbrella anyway (or never going to
bring one), then such information has little value.
Macauley (2005) provides a useful framework for
thinking about the theoretical value of geospatial
information. In her framework, the value of geospatial
information (e.g. a weather forecast for a given location)
depends on three key parameters: the uncertainty of
the decision makers before the information is acquired,
the value of getting the decision “right,” and the cost of
using and applying the geospatial information. These
factors are explained below, including a specific example
of how they are applied: an airport’s decision of whether
to cancel a flight in anticipation of an extreme weather
event:10
• How uncertain are decision makers? If the decision
maker has no idea if the incoming storm will even
pass over the airport (or how severe the storm will
be), then the value of a specific and accurate weather
forecast will be relatively higher or lower depending
on her prior knowledge of the situation. What options
are available to the decision maker to reduce her
uncertainty? Are there other sources of information
that could provide a satisfactory weather forecast?
Are cheaper alternatives available for purchase? In
general, the lower the uncertainty, the lower the value
of additional information—which suggests the rule
that information provision is most valuable when the
existing knowledge of decision makers is relatively
unclear or uncertain. One important factor that can
influence uncertainty is the quality of the alternate
data to which decision makers have access. For
example, if alternate data is unavailable or is of low
quality, then there might be significant uncertainty,
making the value of new information significant.
As a counterpoint, if high-quality or reliable forms
of alternate data are available, the value of new
information might be lower.
THE ECONOMICS OF GEOSPATIAL DATA
• What is at stake as an outcome of their decisions?
Is this airport a major connecting hub (or a small
regional airport)? How many passengers will be on
the flight in question? What is the specific route, and
are there other flights with the same route earlier or
later that day? What are the consequences, for the
airport, the airline, and the passengers, of canceling
the flight? What could be the consequences of not
canceling the flight? How one values those potential
outcomes shapes how one values the knowledge
of the storm forecast for that day. More generally,
the greater the stakes of an outcome that could be
improved as a result of new information, the higher is
the value of information. Therefore, the general rule
here is that geospatial information should be made
available when high-stakes decisions are at play.
• How much will it cost to use the information to
make decisions? Airports and airlines must set up
systems to operationalize weather data and use it
to guide decision making. For example, Delta has a
team of 25 meteorologists that continually monitor
weather forecasts and provide “estimated times of
impact” (Ledwich, 2015). For the airline, developing
and running this service is costly, and the cost of
information subtracts from the information’s added
value to the decision-making process. The central
insight is that using information is not free. One needs
investments in complementary assets such as human
or technological capital. I Information that is relatively
cheaper to apply and use is generally more valuable
than information which is harder to use. The resulting
rule is that efforts to simplify the use of information
generally add to its value.
A market failure is a failure of a market to deliver an optimal result. When failure happens, less welfare is created than could be created given the
11
available resources. The social task then becomes to correct the failure. Encyclopædia Britannica (https://www.britannica.com/topic/market-failure.)
12
A public good is a product that an individual can consume without reducing its availability to others and of which no one is deprived. Investopedia
(https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/public-good.asp)
13
This section builds heavily on the discussion on this topic in Nagaraj & Stern, 2020, Section 3.
14 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
From a theoretical perspective, the main takeaway
is that spending on information provision should
target cases where 1) uncertainty is high, 2),
consequences are significant, and 3) costs of use are
favorable to more expensive substitutes. While the
framework presented describes the value of information
for particular applications, the general process for
determining the value of geospatial information
becomes more complicated when expanded to consider
all of the stakeholders that might value the information.
Simplistically, a provider of information can identify all
of the potential constituencies and decision makers,
and classify them along these three dimensions in order
to help it assess, or in some cases increase, the total
value of the geospatial data it provides. For example,
weather data is useful for individuals, businesses, and
governments. One could imagine valuing that data
differently for these different constituencies. Macauley
(2005) groups such decision makers into three
communities: consumers and producers of information,
public officials whose job is to fund productive
investment in data acquisition and information
development (including sensors and other hardware,
algorithm design and software tools, and a trained labor
force), and the public at large.
THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENTS
IN THE PROVISION OF
GEOSPATIAL DATA
Why is government participation merited at all?
The basic contention is that a free market might not
always provide the socially optimal level of data,
thereby leading to market failures11. Understanding the
conditions under which such market failures are likely to
arise could help governments target their interventions
and investment. In particular, the economic properties
of geospatial data as a public good12 with high fixed
costs creates two types of market failures: under-
provision or monopoly control. Both call for public
sector intervention.13
 THE ECONOMICS OF GEOSPATIAL DATA

To understand why, it is important to note that in
many cases geospatial data includes largely factual
information that is relatively non-excludable14, since
copyright law does not protect the copying of facts.
Therefore, if a map disseminates newly collected data
that represents new facts (e.g. the height of a mountain
range), this information can be freely copied and
distributed without breaking copyright law, making
the original purveyor of that information vulnerable
to competitive imitation. The implication is that there
will be underinvestment in the production of such
data among the private sector, creating the need for
public investment instead. Indeed, many of the most
consequential maps in use, such as Census population
maps, weather forecasting charts, hurricane prediction
maps etc., are provided by the public sector. Even the
private sector alternatives in these areas rely heavily on
public data.
A diametrically opposite case is when geospatial data
can be protected through secrecy enforced via contracts
(as for the high-definition maps used in autonomous
vehicles) or via copyright law (such as image data in
satellite or aerial maps). In this case, geospatial data
behaves similarly to a club good15. When this is the
case, rather than an underinvestment, there could
be significant investment by a few private-sector
entities who engage in monopolistic or oligopolistic
competition. For example, DigitalGlobe is a leading
provider of high-resolution satellite imagery (which
cannot be copied given copyright law) that charges
significant prices for access to this data for a variety of
downstream sectors such as insurance, energy, mining,
etc. Similarly, firms such as TomTom/TeleAtlas and
NAVTEQ/HERE virtually control the private market for
access to raw global street-level geospatial data

14
A public good must generally be both “non-rivalrous” and “non-excludable.” Non-rivalrous means that the goods don’t dwindle in supply as people
consume them. Non-excludability means that the good is available to all and cannot be withheld, even from people who do not contribute to its public
funding. Investopedia (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/public-good.asp)
15
Club goods are non-rivalrous, so they’re not in danger of being used up or defiled by one or more person’s use, up until the point where continued use
causes the use of the goods to become congested. They are, however, excludable, which means that people can be denied access to them or use of them.
CFI (https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/economics/club-goods/)

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 15
THE ECONOMICS OF GEOSPATIAL DATA
HISTORICALLY, GOVERNMENTS HAVE TENDED
TO CHARGE LOWER PRICES AND PROVIDE
MORE UNIFORM COVERAGE ACROSS REGIONS
THAN PRIVATE SECTOR PLAYERS.
relevant to navigational devices and in autonomous
vehicles. Once a provider has entered the market, it
is quite difficult for competitors to enter because the
significant fixed costs of data collection and the cheap
reproducibility of the data create entry barriers and
support natural monopolies.
Monopolies tend to charge high prices for geospatial
data, leading to data underutilization and a lower than
optimal level of consumer welfare. High prices also tend
to dissuade new users of the data, which is detrimental
because those new users have the potential to discover
new use cases. The outcome is under-exploration of
creative uses for the underlying data (Nagaraj, Shears
and De Vaan, 2020). Finally, to make matters worse,
monopolies also raise equity concerns as they tend to
invest heavily in data collection in places with strong
demand (such as large, urban agglomerations) and
neglect relatively rural or isolated regions. Take the
example of Yelp, a crowdsourcing platform to review
businesses, which has much better coverage of cities
and larger establishments, leaving smaller and more
rural establishments literally “off the map”. This omission
can be quite costly for restaurants, by some estimates
decreasing monthly revenues by about nine percent
(Luca, Nagaraj, and Subramani, 2019). In such cases,
governments have an important role to play in regulating
prices for geospatial data, by enabling different types
of consumers to overcome the affordability gap, and
in ensuring equitable data collection across different
constituencies and geographies.
16 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
Who should provide geospatial data and what
are its implications for social welfare? On one hand,
governments are a natural candidate to provide
generally useful geospatial data. Governments are
already engaged in the collection and use of some
forms of geospatial data for internal purposes (even
if such data are rarely made accessible to the general
public) and their incentives are aligned with increasing
social welfare. On the other hand, the private sector
can also serve as a provider of valuable geospatial data.
For example, the rise of private sector “micro-satellite”
imaging companies such as Planet Labs has increasingly
begs the question of to what degree the public sector
should continue to be involved in satellite-based
imagery (Popkin 2018).
Historically, governments have tended to charge lower
prices and provide more uniform coverage across
regions than private sector players. Since governments
have a mandate of equity, they might collect data about
all constituencies (such as urban and rural areas), while
a private sector entity might prioritize collecting data
on regions with greater market potential (ignoring
rural areas or undeveloped countries, for example).
On the other hand, governments might not be able
to commercialize, market and find new use cases
for geospatial data—ultimately limiting its use. For
example, they might not invest to the same extent in
the marketing and training that is essential to help users
unlock the value of the geospatial data being provided.
They may also not understand the needs of industry
or innovate on their existing technology. In contrast,
private agencies usually tend to provide greater training,
support, and marketing for data since their revenues are
directly linked to the market demand they create for the
data. However, prices are likely to be significantly higher
and coverage might be more targeted towards those
 THE ECONOMICS OF GEOSPATIAL DATA

who can pay. So, the question remains as to whether and

how governments should be involved in the production
of geospatial data? Should they completely give away
the responsibility of data provision to the private sector?
Partially? Or keep it entirely as a public service?

Governments across the world demonstrate vast

variation in terms of their role in providing geospatial
data. This variation exists across time, space and the
types of data that they provide. Over time, political
climates have determined to what extent governments
should be involved in the service of geospatial
information. Particularly in the US, times of more
conservative administrations come with narrower views
for the role of government (see Landsat case below).
More recently, the number of private and commercial
space satellites has grown, which is putting pressure on
governments to reduce their participation as providers of
geospatial data (Miglarese and Nakanuku-Diggs, 2018).
At the global level, there continues to be a fair degree
of variation in the level of government investment in GIS
data across the world (Borowitz, 2017), and the degree
to which governments are involved in the provision of
GIS data markedly impacts the level of data openess. The
Global Open Data Index (GODI, by the Open Knowledge
Foundation), for example, tracks the “openness” of
government data by country. “Openness” of data is
measured based on several key features: openly licensed,
in a machine-readable format, downloadable at once,
up-to-date, publicly available, and available free of
charge (Global Open Data Index, 2019). Examples of
the major sources of geospatial information that are
operated by national governments include national
maps, weather forecasts, air quality measurements,
national statistics, water quality measurements, election
results, and land ownership records.
For example, when comparing the provision of national
statistics data around the world, over 26 countries,
including the US, Brazil and Norway, received the top
score on the GODI in terms of their success in providing
national statistics data. On the less well-performing end
of the Index, India ranks 50th, Cameroon is 82nd and
Afghanistan and Myanmar rank at the very bottom.
The average rating of openness for countries’ national
statistics is a not-very-impressive 27 percent (Global
Open Data Index. 2019)16. Similar patterns are found
when comparing different types of geospatial datasets.
Naturally, some types of data that governments
already have an interest in collecting directly (such
as employment statistics, national maps, and election
results) are more likely to be publicly provided. But
in the case of geospatial data from high resolution
satellites, not all governments find that investment to
be worth it, and more and more private companies are
providing this kind of data.
To summarize, purely privately run geospatial data
markets can result in underinvestment or monopoly
control, which both necessitate public intervention.
Given how valuable geospatial data can be, governments
need to think critically about when and how to regulate
these markets. Governments should give particular
consideration to when should they supply this data
themselves versus relying on the private sector. In
Chapter 5, some practical considerations for government
involvement in geospatial data markets are discussed.

16
Last time that Saudi Arabia was evaluated in this ranking was in 2015 and it ranked #103. One of the main problems identified was the lack of
location datasets.

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 17
3
 METHODOLOGY

METHODOLOGY
SCOPE OF WORK
As the adoption of geospatial information and technologies increases across the
world, so does public interest in evaluating its potential benefits. Existing analyses of
this type, however, have had different focuses, ranging from evaluations of GIT as an
industry, assessments of the importance of collecting geospatial data, guidelines for
creating enabling infrastructures for the effective use of geospatial technologies, and
evaluations of the broader societal implications of wider adoption. Considering how
varied and substantial the body of literature is—and in the interest of clarity for this
inquiry—the matrix in Figure 3 is a representation of the way this report categorizes
the existing studies on benefits of GI, and it also provides a simple framework to
narrow down the type of study needed to analyze a new GI initiative. Any given GI
initiatives or use case can be classified by two nominal scales: a geographic scale and
a functional scale.

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 19
METHODOLOGY
The geographic scale is simply a classification of
administrative level for which any given GI application is
intended. The functional scales shown in the matrix of
Figure 1 represent the different levels at which specific
GI initiatives can have an impact. The levels are as follows:
• GI Ecosystem: This includes all geospatial information
and technologies that exist in the public sector, the
private sector, and civil society.
• Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI): Generally, these
are regulated and/or implemented by governments,
and consist of the technology, policies, standards, and
human resources necessary to acquire, process, store,
distribute, and improve utilization of geospatial data
(FGDC, 2020).
FIGURE 1: MATRIX OF CLASSIFICATION FOR SELECTED GI INITIATIVES
20 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
• GI Commercial Sector: Conventional industry segments
such as surveying, mapping, remote sensing, positioning
and GIS, that provide the essential tools for the
production of products and services such as: Geospatial
information capture and processing (i.e. data collection
using GPS), Geospatial information analysis and
presentation (i.e. data analysis using GIS), Value-added
information production (i.e. integration of different
geospatial information), Location-based services (i.e.
tracking assets) and Geospatial information technologies
and equipment used for GI capture (American
Association for the Advancement of Science).
• GI Project: An individual purchase, investment,
implementation, or application of GI with limited
scope (impact-wise) relative to the other categories.

For example, a report on INSPIRE—Europe’s
foundational legislation on spatial data infrastructure,
could be classified to be about SDIs at the Regional
Level. Another widely recognized example is the
AlphaBeta (2017) report about the economic impact
of geospatial services, which can be classified as a
GI ecosystem study at the global level. Ideally, these
classifications will enable practitioners to better define
both the problem they seek to address and continue
the process of evaluating how to best address that
problem. As described in the following section, the next
step will require the practitioner to select and develop a
modelling approach for their specific purposes.
While this report can most closely be categorized as
evaluating benefits of SDI at the national level, some
of the identified applications included in the analysis
are dependent on the larger global GIT ecosystem,
such as global navigation satellite systems or satellite
constellations that provide imagery (e.g. Landsat or
Sentinel), global platforms (i.e. Google Earth) or global
datasets (i.e. open street maps), that perhaps extends
the market to a global scale.
Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 21
METHODOLOGY
PARTIAL VERSUS
GENERAL EQUILIBRIUM
There are two broad categories of economic modeling
methods: partial equilibrium and general equilibrium.
Partial equilibrium is a condition of economic
equilibrium which only occurs in part of the economy.
As such, a partial equilibrium model typically focuses on
a single market or a subset of markets. It typically does
not account for interlinkages between markets, and how
price and output changes in one market impact price
and output in another. General equilibrium refers to the
whole economy. General equilibrium models attempt
to model how all sectors of an economy are linked, and
how changes in one sector impact changes in another
(which, in turn, may reverberate back to changes in the
original market, until an equilibrium is achieved).
The distinction between partial and general equilibrium
models can be best understood through an example. A
researcher studying how improved weather forecasts
using GI impact the agricultural sector may be interested
in determining the impact of forecasts on the incomes
of farmers. The researcher may find that forecasts of
a given quality improve wheat yields by X percent.
They would then use the prevailing price for wheat to
calculate the gain in income that a farmer would receive
due to their use of these improved forecasts. This result
would be considered partial equilibrium, however,
because it does not account for the fact that when
wheat production increases, the price per unit of wheat
would decline. A general equilibrium model would
attempt to model how prices would change in reaction
to this shock, and would arrive at a different impact on
farmers’ incomes.
The benefits of a general equilibrium model over a
partial equilibrium model are clear from the description
above—one arrives at a more accurate reflection of
economic impacts by accounting for second order
effects like price changes. However, that accuracy is
highly dependent on the assumptions that are made
to model general equilibrium effects. For instance, in
the above example, one would need information on
the price elasticity of wheat, which depends on the
preferences of consumers, the prices of substitutes like
rice and other grains, and a whole host of other data
points. In many cases, this information is simply not
available. Thus, there are important trade-offs between
general and partial equilibrium models.
METHODOLOGY

The advantage of using a partial equilibrium model
is two-fold. The main advantage is its minimal data
requirement. The second advantage is that it allows
the analysis to be done at a disaggregated level. In
the example above, data like price elasticity and price
of substitutes are not required. The researcher only
needs to know the prevailing market price of wheat
and percentage by which production will be increased
in order to calculate the impact of improved forecasts.
This relative ease of analysis may allow the researcher
to dive deeper into the questions they are asking—for
instance, by examining different types of weather
forecasts or looking at different types of crops. Because
of these advantages, this report will be carried out
using a partial equilibrium analysis for selected sectors
of the KSA economy, which will be described in the
next section.
ECONOMIC SECTORS
After selecting the economic modeling approach to
be used, the next challenge is to match the project
requirements with the resources to carry it out. In
this regard, to meet the project’s timeline and budget
constraints, there was a need to estimate the impact
of GIT on only a subset of KSA’s economic sectors.
Therefore, it was decided that the analysis of the
potential benefits from GIT to the economy of KSA
would be limited to seven sectors: Disaster Risk
Management, Education, Energy, Commerce, Public
Safety, Public Health, and Infrastructure17. These sectors
were selected for their consistency with—and ability
to contribute to—the government’s current economic
and social priorities as outlined in the KSA Vision 2030
suite of policy objectives. The authors acknowledge
that restricting the analysis to just seven sectors might
provide an incomplete picture of the value of GIT,
and that the true economic value to the economy of
KSA might be much larger were the entire economy
subjected to this analysis.
APPROACHES TO MEASURE
ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF GIT
The wide range of possible applications for GIT makes
empirically quantifying its value particularly difficult.
The different types of users (government, business,
research) further complicate quantifying the economic
benefits. Further, it is very difficult to know exactly
when and which piece of geospatial data was used
and for which decisions, since such data are rarely
tracked, making it hard to measure usage, let alone
value it. Finally, as our theoretical framework highlights,
the value of data depends not solely on the particular
decision that was taken, but also on the counterfactual
case of what decision might have been taken had that
data not been available. Such counterfactuals are hard
to define. As a result of these difficulties, empirical

17
The authors had originally intended to conduct a thorough quantitative analysis of the tourism sector of the study in KSA. However, due to
extended disruptions to travel and tourist activities caused by the COVID 19 pandemic, there is an increased degree of uncertainty about the future
directions of the industry in the KSA post-recovery. This makes any forward-looking analysis virtually impossible. Nevertheless, annex section 7.9
contains some qualitative analysis and global use cases examples on how GIT is being used for tourism.

22 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia

THE FIRST METHOD TO ASSESS THE
VALUE OF GEOSPATIAL DATA RELIES
ON SURVEYS OF USERS CURRENTLY
USING THE DATA.
estimates of the value of geospatial information are
scarce. Even when they do exist, they are usually
focused on a specific subset of data (such as Landsat
remote sensing images, weather data, topographic
surveys, etc.) and a specific application (e.g. mining
or fisheries).
Despite these limitations, previous research has
looked at producing empirical estimates of the value
of information. Genovese et al (2009) organized the
literature on the socioeconomic impact of geospatial
information by research approaches and topics,
including a) consultation and references, b) evaluation
techniques, c) indicators and statistics and d) cost
benefit analysis (CBA) and return on investment (ROI).
While this framework is helpful, for the purposes of this
report, the authors have recategorized these different
approaches for assessing the value of geospatial data
into the following three categories: survey-based,
simulation, and quasi-experimental.
i. Survey-based
(Value created and/or Cost saved)
The first method to assess the value of geospatial data
relies on surveys of users currently using the data.
Such surveys can be conducted periodically, and users
can be asked about the particular applications of the
data in their own work. They can also be asked about
what parts of the overall data they are finding useful,
what other pieces of data they would like in the future,
and why. Such surveys are excellent at providing a
comprehensive review of all possible applications of
a particular dataset (they are not limited to any one
application area). As such, they are great at capturing
unexpected uses or applications of the data not
foreseen by the researcher trying to evaluate the
Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 23
METHODOLOGY
value of data. For example, USGS’s 2012 survey of
Landsat users (Miller, 2013), found a large number
of application areas: 38 different types of individual
applications (e.g. Biodiversity conservation, Technical
training, Humanitarian aid, etc.) in nine different fields
(e.g. Agriculture, Energy, Environmental sciences, etc.).
These surveys are also useful in cataloguing changing
preferences over time and across different user groups,
which provides feedback to data providers and guides
the next iteration of the data collection technology.
In terms of economic valuation, that USGS survey also
calculated an estimated value of Landsat imagery using
a contingent valuation method (Miller, 2013). They found
that the total economic benefit of Landsat images used
in 2011 was estimated to be just over US$ 1.79 billion for
US users and almost US$ 400 million for international
users. Further, RTI International produced a report on
the Economic Benefits of Global Positioning System
(GPS) and found that for the United States alone, “GPS
has generated roughly US$ 1.4 trillion in economic
benefits (2017US$) since it was made available for
civilian and commercial use in the 1980s” (O’Connor et
al, 2019). Such willingness-to-pay studies via surveys
can help pin down a range of values for the value of
information across many different constituencies.
METHODOLOGY
Further, these surveys also ask users about alternate
sources of data, or what they might have done if the
focal geospatial dataset was absent. This allows the
researchers to understand the competitive landscape
of the data and the subsequent implications for pricing,
marketing and similar decisions with regard to the focal
dataset. Further, quantifying the cost of alternate data
or decisions also helps to pin down the cost savings
generated by providing access to a given dataset, which
is another way to calculate the value of data for different
user segments. For example, an RFF/NASA joint working
paper on the cost effectiveness of using satellite Earth
observation to inform post-wildfire responses compared
the usage costs per wildfire incident of Landsat versus
commercial imagery (Bernknopf et al, 2019). This study
also estimated multi-year cost savings of using Landsat
versus commercial imagery.
24 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
While surveys are quite valuable and form an essential
part of the toolkit in measuring the value of data, they
tend to underestimate the value of data to end users.
It is hard for survey respondents to imagine what they
might have done if geospatial data was not available in
decision making and the relatively large consequences
this would have had. Further, simply comparing cost
differences between cheaper, public data and more
expensive commercial data in order to evaluate the
cost savings generated through the availability of
public data, assumes that decision makers would have
used the same amount or type of data even if it were
more expensive. However, it is likely that the amount
of information used would have been lower if its cost
were higher, making it hard to evaluate cost savings
by comparing the cost of public data with the cost of
commercial data. For example, in the example relating
to post-wildfire responses above, it is possible that
per wildfire case, roughly the same insights could be
obtained (to inform response decisions) using lower
resolution images or a lesser number of images, if the
more expensive commercial data were the only option.
 METHODOLOGY

THE BENEFIT OF THE SIMULATION APPROACH

IS THAT IT CAREFULLY SPECIFIES HOW DATA
AFFECT VALUE AND INFERS THE VALUE OF
DATA THROUGH A SOUND ECONOMIC LOGIC.

ii. Simulation of applications and are not able to capture unexpected

While surveys are excellent tools to capture potential
uses of geospatial data, ultimately, they are less able to
capture how data affect decisions and how decisions
might be altered when access to data is not possible. To
understand how, precisely, a lack of information would
affect decisions and to derive the value of data using
this approach, one needs a specific decision context
and a theoretical model of how data are incorporated
into decision making. One can then simulate different
amounts of data, or data of different levels of accuracy
or frequency, and predict the possible decisions and the
corresponding utilities of these decisions.
An example of using simulations to assess the value
of data comes from “The Value of Frost Forecasting:
A Bayesian Appraisal” (Baquet et al, 1976). This study
finds that “the averaged seasonal values estimated per
day per acre were US$ 5.39 for frost forecasts provided
by the U.S. Weather Service, US$ 8.57 for perfect frost
forecasts, US$ 4.73 for profit maximizers, and US$ 191.39
for completely ignorant decision makers” (Baquet et al,
1976). To arrive at those estimates, the authors created
a model that combined a monetary payoff table (based
on expected yields, production costs, expected value of
crop) with a forecast distribution (derived from forecast
information and historical data) in order to simulate
probabilistic values. While less popular, simulation-based
approaches have been used combined with surveys to
estimate the value of information in many cases.
The benefit of such an approach is that it carefully
specifies how data affect value and infers the value of
data through a sound economic logic. Further, one can
simulate the value of data even before they are provided
and use these calculations to invest in data-generating
technologies or projects. However, such approaches are
also limited in that they focus on a very narrow set
uses. Further, the estimates are based on simulations
and it is possible that realized effects will be quite
different than predicted effects if individuals do not act
in accordance with the specified theoretical model. For
example, while some of these models assume profit
maximization, if individuals exhibit behavioral biases,
they might skew the results of the model, leading
to errors in estimates of the value of information.
Simulation-based approaches are therefore most useful
when the underlying theoretical model can be fully
specified, validated and found trustworthy.
iii. Quasi-Experimental
While survey- and simulation-based approaches are
quite common in the literature, an emerging set of
studies use quasi-experiments to evaluate the value
of data. Like simulations, these studies also focus on
specific datasets. However, rather than focus on a
narrow decision or build a theoretical model of how
exactly data affect a particular decision, this approach
might focus on an entire industry or an entire class of
decisions and not model how exactly data would affect
a single decision. The key innovation in these studies
is to simulate the following experiment: observe one
state of the world where decisions are made with the
geospatial data and another where such data are not
available. These studies find “natural experiments”
that simulate the factors that the researchers wish to
study, enabling them to examine what has historically
happened when data has not been available. Natural
experiments are cases when geospatial data happen to
not be available to decision makers, allowing researchers
to measure the change in the quality of decisions as
compared to cases when data were indeed available.

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 25
METHODOLOGY

BOX 1: THE VALUE OF LANDSAT DATA IN SHAPING DISCOVERIES IN THE GOLD MINING INDUSTRY

A canonical example of a quasi-experimental method
comes from Nagaraj (2018). This paper examined the
value of Landsat data in shaping discoveries in the
gold mining industry, where such data can be used
to guide investment and exploration activity. Rather
than surveying mining firms on their use of Landsat
imagery or simulating how discoveries would occur
(or not occur) if Landsat data were not available,
Nagaraj (2018) exploited the fact that even though
Landsat was designed to have global coverage from
its launch, in practice, many regions of the world did
not receive Landsat imagery due to technical errors
in data collection. Even when images were collected,
many places received unusable data because images
were obscured by cloud cover. Nagaraj (2018) used
this variation as a natural experiment to understand
how gold exploration activity changes in places where
Landsat data were made available as compared to
places where they, for whatever reason, were not.
The findings were striking. Landsat imagery led to a
doubling in the rate of gold discovery and increased
the market share of smaller, “junior” firms in the
industry from about 10 to 25 percent. Using rough
estimates of discovery value (derived from data on
the size of discoveries), the Landsat program led to a
gain of approximately US$ 17 million dollars for every
mapped block over a fifteen-year time period. For a
country the size of the United States, this translates
to additional gold reserves worth about US$ 10 billion
that can be attributed to the information from the
Landsat program. Further, these estimates can be
viewed as causal because they condition out all other
factors that could affect the value of Landsat data and
they also include a variety of spillover effects such as
firms copying each other’s actions, even if only one of
them directly used Landsat information.

FIGURE 2:
EXAMPLE OF VARIATION IN LANDSAT TIMING TO EXAMINE THE VALUE OF LANDSAT FOR GOLD EXPLORATION

Note: This map presents the year in which the first Landsat image was available for a given location
Source: Nagaraj, 2018

26 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia

An example of this quasi-experimental approach comes
from Barwick et al (2019), who evaluated the impact of
air pollution data on mortality in China. The researchers
relied on a research design wherein different cities were
provided with air pollution data at different points in
time. This allowed the researchers to tease out the value
of information over and above other factors. They found
that government data reduces air pollution’s mortality
cost by nearly seven percent, amounting to an annual
benefit of RMB 120 billion, an order of magnitude
larger than the combined cost of the air pollution level
monitoring program and avoidance behavior.
While quasi-experimental methods are convincing in
that they estimate realized value while accounting for
the counterfactual of data not being provided, they
are relatively difficult to execute given the paucity of
natural experiments in many settings. Moreover, in many
government programs, data are not uniformly provided,
or are not gradually increasing in coverage, which is
problematic because it is precisely these variations in
data availability that are used to examine the value of
geospatial information in any given scenario.
Considering the pros and cons, timeframe and budget
requirements of these three approaches and the data
currently available, this report will use simulations to
estimate the benefits of GI.
OTHER LIMITATIONS
AND BASIC ASSUMPTIONS
Economic models generally rest on several restrictive
assumptions or may intentionally omit issues that are
important to the subject being considered. Measuring
GI value is no exception. The following are a series
of caveats, limitations, and basic assumptions that
the authors identified before carrying out the benefit
estimation summarized in this report.
Time dimension: Ex ante vs ex post (Latin for before
and after the event) is an excellent framework to further
narrow which methodology to choose, the type of
data needed, and assumptions that should be made to
simplify the analysis. For example, if a practitioner needs
to estimate the potential benefits of implementing a
real-time tracking system for a logistics company,
Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 27
METHODOLOGY
they will need to do an ex-ante analysis. These types
of analyses involve carrying out a prospective analysis
of what the impact of an intervention might be, to
inform policymaking or business planning (OECD,
2014). As such, a practitioner should focus on capturing
data on the current state of affairs and identifying
a methodology (i.e. simulation/benefit transfers) to
estimate the future status after the intervention.
Conversely, if a practitioner needs to estimate what
was the cost savings of adopting a Spatial Data
Infrastructure that established a series of fundamental
datasets shared with many users, then the practitioner
will need to perform an ex-post analysis. Such an
analysis studies to what extent, and how, a GI initiative
corrected the problem it was intended to address. The
focus should be on collecting past data and choosing a
methodology (i.e. surveys or quasi experimental) that
can measure the impact of the GI intervention after it
was implemented. For the purpose of this report, an
ex-ante analysis of the potential future benefits of GI
to the economy of KSA will be carried out.
Data quality. The quality of GI will affect the degree
to which uncertainty will factor into the decision-
making process for policymakers, thus informing the
value that end users can derive from it. GI quality will
ultimately depend on five factors: lineage, positional
accuracy, accuracy of attributes, logical consistency,
and completion (Moellering, 1987). There is a solid
theoretical framework (including many international
standards) considering geospatial data quality and an
ample bibliography regarding this matter. However, the
assessment of GI quality is not yet fully implemented in
existing processes to produce such data (Ariza-Lopez
et al, 2020). This shortcoming is likely due to several
reasons, including: budget constraints (geographic
information production processes are arduous,
expensive, and take a long time to be completed),
competing quality indicators and measures (making
comparison of different datasets challenging), slow
implementation of the international standard ISO
19157:2013, and free alternative solutions that do not
prioritize data quality. As the quality of GI is not
standardized in KSA, it is not feasible to assess the
current situation. Therefore, the analysis will assume
that, in the future, the available data will be of the
best possible quality and thus, benefits will be fully
accounted for.
METHODOLOGY
Value attribution. Geospatial information operates
within a broader ecosystem and in concert with
geospatial technologies and institutions. Several
different actors are involved in this process, from data
creators to data servicers to producers of data-driven
products. This can be described as a data value chain,
as follows (Berends et al, 2017):
• “Suppliers” create the data
• “Aggregators” subsequently collect and aggregate the
data
• “Developers” use the data for the development of new
applications
• “Enrichers” analyze the data to gain new and/or
better insights
• “Enablers” facilitate the supply or use of data for the
other uses, for instance by providing platforms from
which the data can be extracted
In this context, the determination of how to allocate
the value attributed to geospatial information among
these various actors becomes very important. To
some extent, the value of information in this value
chain framework includes the costs of integrating
the information, which could serve as a proxy of how
much value is incorporated in each stage and thus, by
each actor. However, a more careful accounting might
allocate the value created across different parts of
the geospatial technology pipeline in alternate ways.
Moreover, depending on the user and for what purpose
GI is being used, the same information can be valued
differently by different actors (Longhorn & Blakemore,
2008). Estimating the value of GI is further complicated
by its use in both the public and private spheres.
Finally, benefits from geospatial information can also
be attributed differently depending on the specific
empirical approach used to measure its value.
18
At first sight, this could be interpreted as a strong assumption that could lead to overestimation of economic benefits, as there are many other
technologies, processes and inputs involved. However, on the other hand, without the use of GIT, the economics benefits would not be accrued
either. It is also worth noting that this study is based on the estimation of economic benefits from a small sample of use cases from only seven
sectors of the economy. Therefore, the results of these estimations are also subject to limitations associated with small sampling.
28 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
Determining to what extent the value added by each
player in the value chain can be attributed to geospatial
information as opposed to other considerations (that
might relate to the value of information, but not
necessary to location-specific information) is difficult
to parse. In this report it was assumed that since
GIT is a necessary enabler (although not sufficient),
the potential economic benefits derived from using
geospatial information and technologies will be fully
attributed to it (even though other non-GI technologies
are involved)18. Finally, no benefit distribution among
actors in the GI value chain is estimated.
Direct vs indirect benefits. Benefits from GI can be
categorized as direct and indirect benefits. Direct
benefits are realized from direct causal relationships.
They can include cost savings, efficiency gains, and
productivity increases from the implementation of GI
initiatives. Cost savings from GI are straightforward to
calculate. For example, using GI to build an effective
flood warning system gives people more time to
evacuate, move property to higher ground, and use
sandbags to block the water. These actions will directly
result in a reduction of economic loss due to the flood
disaster. Another way to consider direct benefits is
through the lens of productivity, which is commonly
defined as a ratio between the output volume and the
volume of inputs. For example, by installing smart meters
in the electricity market, manual meter reading will be
replaced by automatic reading, improving the efficiency
of meter reading. A second example: Incorporating GI at
shipping ports will result in fewer workers and less time
needed to load/unload the same number of containers,
increasing productivity at these ports.
Indirect benefits, in contrast, are benefits that cannot
be directly realized or observed. These benefits are
achieved in addition to direct benefits. To use another
example from the energy sector, adopting a smart
grid strategy will reduce the number of outages.
Consequently, because of the reduction in outages,
industry output increases, resulting in higher GDP. The
increased industrial production is considered an indirect
benefit from the application of GI in the energy sector.
 METHODOLOGY

Both the direct and indirect benefits discussed above
are considered monetizable benefits, but there are also
benefits that are difficult to monetize or that are not
directly monetizable (i.e. the increase of population
wellbeing caused by the reduction of carbon emissions
due to better traffic management using GI). There
also exist non-monetizable benefits. For example, the
number of lives saved by the flood warning system or
the increase of population wellbeing caused by the
reduction of carbon emissions due to better traffic
management using GIT. This report will focus mainly on
analyzing direct monetizable benefits19.
Counterfactual scenario: Every analysis that attempts
to assess the changes (ex ante or ex post) that can
be attributed to a particular intervention, such as a
GI project, initiative or policy, needs to consider a
counterfactual scenario. This is a comparison between
what actually happened (or is expected to happen)
and what would have happened (or will happen) in
the absence of the intervention (World Bank, 2016).
For example, Panahi & Delavar (2009) evaluated the
effectiveness of using GIS-based tools to improve
routing of ambulances and other emergency vehicles.
The counterfactual in such a scenario would be the
methods by which emergency vehicles would otherwise
have been routed. In this case, the true benefit of
the GI initiative is not the current state of affairs
without GI versus the post-GI implementation, but
the scenario where ambulances are routed using GIS
versus an alternative scenario where other technology
is used instead. Otherwise, benefits will be overstated.
Sometimes, however, the counterfactual and status quo
happen to be the same. For instance, in an intervention
where GI is used to develop an early warning system
for sand and dust storms (Akhlak et al., 2012), the next
best option may be the status quo, where people go
about their lives without advanced warning of a disaster.
In this report, it is assumed that the counterfactual
scenario is the current state of affairs. This means that
if KSA decides not to pursue any investment in GIT, it
can be assumed that the future will look exactly like
the present—business-as-usual.
Baseline: Related to the above discussion, another
critical assumption is to understand the state of affairs
at the time of intervention. This is the baseline, and
it serves as the alternative scenario against which
the benefits from increased GI investment can be
evaluated. For example, if a sector already employs GI
in its operations, is at the cutting edge of geospatial
technology, or if there exist different alternative
technologies to GI that could yield similar results, it
can be assumed that a simple investment in GI would
likely yield smaller benefits than in a sector with a less
developed GI infrastructure. This is because the baseline
in the more geospatially underdeveloped sector would
be much lower and thus expected benefits would be
larger. For example, when the case of Saudi ARAMCO
was analyzed, it was found that ARAMCO has access
to the latest geospatial technology and is in possession
of accurate and up-to-date geospatial information.
Therefore, it was concluded that any potential
investment in GIT in the extractives industry would have
yielded a small benefit relative to the potential benefits
in a sector with a less developed GI infrastructure. To
estimate the baseline, a thorough assessment of the
current state of GI in the seven sectors that are the
focus of this report was carried out by interviewing,
consulting and meeting with key KSA’s stakeholders
and experts in the subject matter.

For the Health and Public Safety sectors, the estimations also calculate number of lives saved, however using the Value of Statistical Life (VSL)
19

method, they were monetized and translated into US$.

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 29
4
 BENEFITS ESTIMATION

BENEFITS ESTIMATION
The estimation will only focus on key sectors envisaged by the Saudi Vision 2030,
including Disaster Risk Management, Education, Energy, Commerce (Ports), Public
Safety, Public Health and Infrastructure20. The partial equilibrium analysis will be
carried out by simulating the impact of introducing a selected GIT use case that is not
currently being used in KSA and could bring the most value to the sector. To select
the best use cases, the authors compiled a database of sector-specific use cases
from around the world (Annex 6.1), drawn from searches of academic journals, policy
briefs, white papers, news articles, and blogs. These use cases were then combined
with use case examples specific to KSA, compiled by GASGI and its partners, outlining
the current needs of each sector and the role GIT could play in addressing them. One
use case from each sector was then selected for in-depth economic analysis using
the framework developed by Macauley and presented in section 2.2. According to
that framework, the value of GIT in a given circumstance is determined by (1) the
uncertainty of decision makers before the technology is adopted, (2) the importance
of making the “right” decision, and (3) the cost of using the proposed GIT. It is also
good to note that this approach may underestimate the potential impact of GIT in the
economy, as many potential use cases were, by necessity, not included in the analysis.

20
As explained in section 3.3, annex section 7.9 contains some qualitative analyses and global use cases examples on how GIT is being used
for tourism.

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 31
BENEFITS ESTIMATION
TABLE 2: GEOSPATIAL USE CASES IDENTIFIED FOR EACH KSA ECONOMIC SECTOR
Disaster Risk
SECTOR Education Infrastructure
Management
# OF INT’L
USE CASES
IDENTIFIED 25 31 17
# OF KSA
USE CASES
IDENTIFIED 12 17 9 4
BOX 2 – MAIN ASSUMPTIONS
As discussed in the previous section, the authors
made a series of assumptions to estimate the
economic impact of GI in KSA. Those assumptions are
summarized here:
• The benefit estimations are based on simulations of
the implementation of selected GIT use cases that
could be implemented in the near future, rather than
use cases that are currently exist in the Kingdom.
• It is assumed that the estimated benefits could only
be achieved through the adoption of GIT. Therefore,
100 percent of benefits are attributed to GIT. 21
• To establish the current state of GI in KSA for the
economic sectors chosen (baseline), the authors met
with key stakeholders. The assumption is that if the
use cases were not implemented, the future scenario
will be the same as the current one (counterfactual).
• To reflect the financial aspects of accounting for
revenues and cost in the future, a discounted cash
flow (DCF) formula was adopted. The DCF estimates
the value of an investment today (NPV or present
value), based on the projections of how much money
it will generate in the future. It finds the present
value of expected future cash flows using a discount
rate. The formula takes the following form:
NPV=CF1(1+r)1+CF2(1+r)2+…+CFT(1+r)n
where “NPV” is the net present value, “CF1,2,…, n” is
the cash flow from each period, “r” is the discount
rate, and “n” is the time horizon of this analysis. In
this report, it has been assumed that the discount
rate (r) is equal to 7.5 percent and the time period
(n) under analysis is 15 years.
21
The authors acknowledge that there are a host of other additional factors and conditions (management, governance, macroeconomics,
investment climate, other technologies, etc.) that would also likely need to be in place for the full benefits of GIT to be realized.
32 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
Public Public
Energy Commerce
Safety Health
23 23 12 5
14 6 1
• To simplify the results presentation, the “NPV” value
is annualized using the Equivalent Annual Annuity
Approach (EAA), which calculates the constant
annual cash flow generated by a project over its
lifespan as if it were an annuity. The formula takes
the following form:
C = (r x NPV) / (1 - (1 + r)-n)
where “C” is the equivalent annuity cash flow, “NPV”
the net present value, “r” the interest rate per period
(7.5 percent) and “n” the number of periods (15).
• To monetize the value of lives saved, the Value of
Statistical Life (VSL) approach was used. This value
is reflected in the willingness to pay (WTP), which
captures the marginal trade-offs that individuals are
willing to make to reduce their chances of dying. The
VSL represents the sum of many individuals’ WTP
for marginal reductions in their mortality risks. It is
not the value of any single person’s life or death, nor
does it represent a society’s judgment as to what
that value should be. As there is no VSL estimated
for KSA, the report’s authors followed the World
Bank’s guidance on conducting the benefits’ transfer
of a base value from a quality-screened sample
of studies in OECD countries. Adjusting this value
for differences in income and elasticity between
countries, the VSL for Saudi Arabia is estimated at
US$ 3.1 million.

DISASTER RISK MANAGEMENT
Globally since 1980, more than two million
people and over US$ 3 trillion have been
lost to disasters caused by natural hazards.
Across that time frame, total damages increased by
more than 600 percent, from US$ 23 billion per year in
the 1980s to US$ 150 billion per year in the last decade.22
As climate change, population growth and rapid
urbanization continue to increase the severity of some
types of disasters, it becomes increasingly important
to ensure that cities and other critical infrastructure are
resilient to potential future hazards.
Saudi Arabia is vulnerable to various types of hazards
including dust storms, earthquakes, coastal and
flash flooding, volcanoes, extreme heat, and water
scarcity. Estimates of economic and social damages
from natural disasters are very sparse in KSA. Over
the past three decades, the country has recorded 14
natural disasters, affecting nearly 30,000 people and
resulting in economic losses of approximately US$
450 million (GFDRR, 2019). These numbers are likely
significant underestimates due to severe problems in
the integration of Disaster Risk Management (DRM)
data, including collation, analysis, and dissemination of
disaster loss data and the overall impacts on people,
livelihoods, and economic sectors (GAMEP, 2016).
Several parts of the country are particularly susceptible
to flash floods, which account for the majority of the
loss of economic activity, property damage, and loss of
life due to natural disasters. Most notably, the 2009 flash
floods in the city of Jeddah resulted in the deaths of
122 people and over US$ 270 million in business losses,
though total damages are estimated to be much higher,
as presented in the next section (Al – Zahrini, 2010).
By most accounts, the intensity of disasters in KSA and
the extent of the damage they cause will only increase—
continued economic growth will mean more property
and people in the path of these disasters, and climate
change is also expected to increase their frequency.
In this context and to enhance its preparedness, Saudi
Arabia is increasing efforts to develop a comprehensive
22
Guha-Sapir, D., Below, R., & Hoyois, P. (2015). EM-DAT: International disaster database. Catholic University of Louvain: Brussels, Belgium, 27 (2015),
57-58.
23
The life cycle of disaster preparedness consists of four stages: disaster mitigation, risk reduction, emergency response, and recovery.
24
Kwan, M. P., & Ransberger, D. M. (2010). LiDAR assisted emergency response: Detection of transport network obstructions caused by major disasters.
Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 34(3), 179-188.
Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 33
BENEFITS ESTIMATION
DRM system and improve that system’s governance, as
demonstrated by the establishment of a National Risk
Unit tasked with emergency planning and response.
Using GIT for Disaster Risk Management
As the DRM sector in KSA continues to develop, there
is a wealth of evidence from around the world showing
how GI-based systems have significantly improved
DRM efforts at every stage of the disaster response life
cycle23.
A first example is how emergency preparedness tools
can be improved and adapted to incorporate GIS-
enabled functionalities and improve risk mitigation
efforts. Research from Li & Li (2012) found a GIS-
based early-warning system for landslides in a rural
Chinese village to be an effective method for predicting
landslides in the area. Similarly, geospatial information
including topographic data and aerial photographs were
used to develop an early warning system for geological
hazards in Vietnam (Tran et al., 2019). In San Diego,
California, county officials developed a “Know Your
Hazards” interactive map that allows people to see the
type and level of air pollution they are exposed to, based
on their specific home address (San Diego County,
2007).
Emergency response is a second key element of any
DRM system, and here, too, geospatial technology
can play an important role in maximizing the
productivity and overall effectiveness of response
efforts. For example, the US Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) uses various applications of geospatial
technology to respond to environmental threats. In
the event of a hurricane, the EPA uses a GIS-enabled
tool that collects, tracks, and analyzes important data
at emergency response target areas (EPA, 2018).
Furthermore, in these situations, locating and reaching
survivors as quickly as possible is of great importance,
as even small time intervals can significantly impact
disaster survivors. Researchers in the US24 found that
using LiDAR to detect road blockages caused by
heavy rains in New Orleans led to a roughly 50 percent
reduction in the time it took for emergency vehicles to
reach victims, as compared to without real-time road
status data.
BENEFITS ESTIMATION

GI CAN SUPPORT THE COORDINATION

OF RELIEF EFFORTS BY HELPING TO
IDENTIFY AFFECTED AREAS WITH THE
HIGHEST-PRIORITY NEEDS.

Finally, geospatial technology can be critically important
in the aftermath of emergency situations. GI can
support the coordination of relief efforts by helping to
identify affected areas with the highest-priority needs.
In the aftermath of a 2004 earthquake and tsunami in
Indonesia, GI was used to identify and map risk areas
for contaminated groundwater, which fed into the
development of plans to truck water into cities. Cities in
the US rely on GIS in the aftermath of disasters to ensure
an accurate accounting of damage (topographical
data, property boundaries, parcel data, etc.), which
then informs the allocation of recovery funding
from the Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA). Research has shown that when countries
rebuild stronger, faster, and more inclusively after
natural disasters, the disruption to people’s livelihoods
decreases by as much as 31 percent (Hallegatte, 2018).
Use Case: Early Flood Warning System
Flash floods triggered by torrential rainfall are the
most frequent source of disasters in KSA. Two major
floods occurred in Jeddah city in 2009 and 2011. In each
case, heavy rainfall lasted approximately three hours,
causing extensive flooding. The flooding in 2009 had
an official death toll of 153 people, injured a further 238
people, and damaged over 11,000 residential buildings
(official data regarding the 2011 flood are not available).
Momani and Fadil (2010) found that the 2009 Jeddah
floods results in a loss of about US$ 2.2 billion (US$ 800
million of direct monetary loss and US$ 1.4 billion in long
installation and government facilities, and compensation
for those affected). A separate study by Youssef et al.
(2016a) estimated that the average total damage from
the two Jeddah floods was approximately US$ 3 billion.
The International Disaster Database “EM-DAT”25 provides
a lower damage estimate for the 2009 flood, at US$ 900
million. This database also estimates US$ 300 million in
damages from the 2011 flood. Most importantly, Youssef
et al. (2016b) concluded that a significant amount of
these losses and damages could have been avoided
through an effective Early Flood Warning System.
An Early Flood Warning System collects location-
specific data at weather monitoring stations using
sensors whose readings are transmitted by cellphones,
radios or satellites, and retrieved by specialized GIS
software. These data are stored and shared on a

25
EM-DAT is a global database on natural and technological disasters, containing essential core data on the occurrence and effects of
more than 21,000 disasters in the world, from 1900 to present. EM-DAT is maintained by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of
Disasters (CRED) at the School of Public Health of the Université Catholique de Louvain located in Brussels, Belgium.

34 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
 BENEFITS ESTIMATION

TABLE 3: ANNUAL AVOIDED DAMAGE WITH FLOOD WARNING SYSTEM (MILLIONS OF US$)

FLASH FLOOD DAMAGE SCENARIOS

LOW MEDIUM HIGH

5% $3.78 $9.23 $12.59

EWS
POTENTIAL
SAVINGS
15.6% $11.78 $28.80 $39.27
(IN %)
19% $14.35 $35.08 $47.83

Source: Authors’ calculation

geospatial information platform. Custom tools then

evaluate readings and assess potential flood conditions.
An effective flood warning system is vital for reducing
the time needed to detect hazards and provide
information to emergency responders. It also reduces
the time required to notify the public on how to respond
to a threat, and gives people more time to move outside
of the flood zone, elevate assets to higher ground, or
find other ways to protect their property.

To estimate the benefits of an EWS in KSA, we

followed Carsell et al. (2004) and calculated the cost of
damages from a potential 25-year flood that could be
avoided were such system in place. There were three
challenges in carrying out the analysis: (i) estimating
the future occurrences of flood events and damages, (ii)
accounting for climate change and economic growth
and (iii) estimating to what degree damage could be
reduced due to a GIT-enabled Early Flood Warning
System in KSA. These challenges and how the authors
resolved them are presented in detail in Annex 7.2.

Estimates of potentially avoided flood damages thanks

to an early flood warning system are given in Table 3.
Based on the combinations of three potential damage
scenarios from the largest storm that could occur in
KSA every 25 years and three potential cost savings
scenarios (from installing an EWS in KSA), nine benefits
calculations are presented (see annex 7.2 for details). If
one looks at the medium scenario where an EWS would
imply the avoidance of 15.6 percent of damages, the
damage reductions are estimated to be a total of US$
28.8 per year. The full range of estimates goes from
US$ 3.8 million per year to US$ 47.8 million per year.

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 35
BENEFITS ESTIMATION

EDUCATION
In addition to being a human right There are approximately 36,000 schools in KSA, with
that all governments must strive to 88 percent of them operated publicly and 12 percent
guarantee, education has proven to privately.
be a powerful driver for development and an important
Planning and management of the education sector in
investment in the future of a country. Beyond the critical
Saudi Arabia is essential given the sustained growth it
role that it plays in the development path of a country,
has experienced over the last decade, and the expected
education is also a major sector within any economy.
continuation of that growth due to two factors. First is
In Saudi Arabia, approximately 5.6 percent of 2012
the launch of the King Abdullah Scholarship Program
total gross domestic product was spent on education,
(Ahmed, 2016). Second are the the plans to restructure
exceeding the global average of 4.8 percent (UNDP
and modernize the Saudi Education system as outlined
2013). Primary, intermediate, and secondary school
in the Saudi Vision 2030.
enrollment are near universal, with approximately 6.2
million students currently enrolled (see Table 4)26.

TABLE 4: TOTAL STUDENTS BY GENDER AND LEVEL OF EDUCATION (MILLIONS OF STUDENTS)

2016 1 2017 2 2018 2

STAGES OF
EDUCATION Male Female Total Male Female Total Male Female Total

PRIMARY 1.71 1.64 3.36 1.61 1.56 3.17 1.65 1.59 3.24

INTERMEDIATE 0.76 0.72 1.48 0.75 0.72 1.47 0.78 0.74 1.52

SECONDARY 0.89 0.77 1.65 0.79 0.68 1.47 0.77 0.73 1.50

TOTAL 3.36 3.13 6.50 3.15 2.96 6.11 3.20 3.06 6.26

Source: Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Ministry of Education

1- Including adult education

2- Not including adult education

26
Data received from KSA Ministry of Education

36 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
 BENEFITS ESTIMATION

GI PROVIDES A RANGE OF APPLICATIONS

THAT HAVE BEEN SHOWN TO LEAD
TO SIGNIFICANT EFFICIENCY AND
PRODUCTIVITY GAINS….

Using GIT in the Education Sector
GIT provides a range of applications that have been
shown to lead to significant efficiency and productivity
gains in education planning and management activities.
In Boston, Massachusetts, where the public school
system was spending an average of 10 percent of the
district’s entire budget on student transportation costs,
GIS mapping was used to create more efficiently routed
school bus systems that saved the district US$ 5 million
a year in operating costs (Coleman, 2019). The new
routes are 20 percent more efficient and allow for the
elimination of 8 percent of the bus fleet—reducing CO2
emissions by 20,000 pounds per day in the process.
For the construction of schools, GIS enables applications
that allow for more efficient information systems at all
stages of the construction process. Increasing rates of
school enrollment in KSA will require an expansion of
school construction activity, and GIS can help ensure
that waste and inefficiencies are minimized throughout
the process. 3D models of construction activity and
the surrounding topography have been shown to help
streamline construction activities and ensure a safer
work environment (Ebrahim, 2016).
Especially in a context such as that of KSA, where there
are plans to significantly grow the education sector, the
ability to reliably and cost-effectively assess current
assets and resources is beneficial. In Jasra, India, the
government used GIS tools to identify and analyze the
state of the education sector and measure progress
towards the government’s goals (Agrawal, 2016). Such
mapping is valuable due to its ability to help authorities
make decisions regarding education infrastructure.

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 37
BENEFITS ESTIMATION

Use Case: Improved Management and Planning of Schools

Saudi schools are designed for capacities ranging from
225 to 840 students. However, enrollment levels at
many schools fall far short of maximum capacity levels.
KSA’s Ministry of Education (MoE) has identified 9,011
schools in the country with fewer than 100 students
enrolled in 2018. During meetings with representatives
of the MoE, the authors identified these low-enrollment
schools as a major source of inefficiency in the sector.
This inefficiency could be addressed through geospatial
data on the location of students, teachers, and schools,
which would allow for comprehensive planning, school
district mapping, and the informed siting of new school
construction. The cost of building, maintaining, and
operating superfluous schools is high, underlining the
need for better planning in the sector.
This section describes an analysis to determine the
economic benefits of improved siting and management
of schools, by estimating the annual cost savings from
operating a reduced number of schools and a smaller
bus fleet. The analysis was carried out on two different
and conservative scenarios: low benefits and high
benefits. In the low benefits scenario, it is assumed that
10 percent of low enrollment schools, or 901 schools,
could be consolidated. It further assumes that each
closed school would result in the elimination of two
buses. In the high benefits scenario, it is assumed that
25 percent of low enrollment schools could be closed,
and that the closings would reduce the number of buses
needed by four per school.

TABLE 5: SCHOOL CONSOLIDATION ANNUAL COST SAVINGS DUE TO A REDUCED NUMBER OF SCHOOLS AND BUSES

LOW SCENARIO HIGH SCENARIO

SCHOOLS CLOSED 901 2,252

TOTAL ANNUAL O&M COST PER SCHOOL (US$) $35,200 $35,200

ANNUAL SCHOOL OPERATION SAVINGS (MILLIONS

OF US$)
$31.7 $79.3

BUSES ELIMINATED 1,802 9,008

TOTAL ANNUAL O&M COST PER BUS $17,781 $17,781

ANNUAL BUS COST SAVINGS (MILLIONS OF US$) $32.0 $160.2

TOTAL ANNUAL COST SAVINGS (MILLIONS OF US$) $63.8 $239.4

Source: Authors’ calculations

38 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia

ENERGY IS NECESSARY TO POWER
THE INDUSTRIES, INVESTMENTS, AND
INNOVATIONS THAT DRIVE ECONOMIC
PROSPERITY.
As a result, under the low scenario, annual cost savings
amount to US$ 63.8 million, and under the high scenario
they amount to US$ 239.4 million. Further details on
the model and the final results from a discounted net
present value calculation are shown in Annex 7.3.
ENERGY
A reliable and sustainable energy sector
is key to economic growth. Energy
is necessary to power the industries,
investments, and innovations that drive
economic prosperity. The energy sector in KSA is
currently the principal contributor to the economy,
driven by vast oil reserves that account for upwards
of a quarter of the world’s total proven oil reserves.
Natural gas that was once flared off out of oil wells is
now also collected and used domestically in households.
As innovative technologies are increasingly adopted
across a growing number of economic sectors in KSA,
the energy sector likewise stands to benefit from the
opportunities for expansion and growth represented
by these technologies. The Ministry of Energy and
the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources have
begun to adopt more modern mining and extraction
methods to better access the considerable deposits
of precious minerals throughout the country. As part
of its renewable energy commitment under the Saudi
Vision 2030 initiative, the government is also working to
substantially grow its renewable energy sector by taking
advantage of the region’s favorable climactic attributes.
Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 39
BENEFITS ESTIMATION
GIT in the Energy Sector
Smart grids that use GIT are capable of collecting,
applying, and visualizing smart grid-related information,
including customer behavior, locations of smart meters,
the locations of electric vehicle chargers, etc. The
potential features of GIT-enabled smart grids include
automated distribution management systems, the
management of solar farms, and customer-facing apps
that provides users with real-time energy usage data,
outage reporting, and automatic power reconnection. In
the US city of Chattanooga, Tennessee, for example, the
local power company adopted smart grid technology,
and reported significant positive gains in power quality,
reliability, energy efficiency, and customer service (Glass,
2016). So far, the city’s investment in the system has
resulted in a 65 percent reduction in customer outages,
a 52 percent reduction in the average length of outages,
and a savings of approximately US$ 23 million in post-
storm outage repairs from just a single severe storm.
In KSA specifically, where infrastructure development
and expansion will be continuing into the near future,
the precise mapping capabilities provided by GIT can
have significant benefits. For example, in 2017 Cambodia
commissioned a project to expand electricity connection
to more parts of the country through the construction
of a new power substation (Smith, 2017). PESTECH,
the company awarded with the contract to build the
substation, employed a range of geospatial technologies
to support its design and construction. Among other
things, GI enabled PESTECH to digitize the entire
design process, reducing the time required to develop
schematic drawings to one third of the usual amount,
reducing the number of wasted components (cables,
etc.) by 20 percent, and saving an estimated 70 percent
in total design time as a result of 3D digital modeling.
BENEFITS ESTIMATION

Another consideration is the avoidance of damage to Use Case: Smart Grids

underground utility assets (water mains, power cables,
Recent research (Krane, 2019) showed that the growth
sewage lines, etc.) that can result from the increased
rate of electric connectivity in KSA has increased at
excavation that inevitably accompanies increased land
a rate of approximately 6 percent over the past two
development activities. As excavation teams develop
decades. The productivity and efficiency benefits
land for construction, subterranean drilling can often
afforded by geospatial technology can be significant
result in accidental damage to these assets when
contributors to the Kingdom’s efforts to achieve its goal
information on their location is inadequate. In KSA,
of more than doubling its power generation capacity
inadvertent damage to infrastructure by government
by 2040. Achieving this goal will require planning for a
agencies causes over 1,900 utility outages per year,
wide range of considerations, including more efficient
resulting in over 375,000 minutes of outages. In the US
transmission line routing, the optimization of building
and Canada alone, there were over 270,000 reported
energy performance, or even the remote monitoring of
utility damage events, resulting in approximately US$ 1.7
vegetation growth to prevent inadvertent contact with
billion in property damage and over 400 deaths in 2015
transmission lines. There is a wealth of evidence from
(Moak, 2017).
around the world to show how geospatial technology
There are several use cases across the world that show can benefit these efforts.
how GI mapping has been effective in addressing
Smart grids harness a broad mix of technologies
this problem. For example, at Heathrow International
to provide, digitally, an unprecedented degree of
Airport in London, officials have developed a Validation
communication between utility service providers and
Life Cycle system that maps and continually updates
consumers. GIS supports the establishment of a smart
information about utility assets. This information is
grid system because it allows utility operators to more
available to developers upon request. This service
quickly and effectively collect and analyze data about
includes web-based access to asset location
customer behavior, install sensors, and maintain existing
information, as well as digital renderings of building
infrastructure. Smart grid-enabled electricity networks
models, design drawings, and other important
lead to reduced outages, shorter response times, and
maintenance and management information. Since its
increased consumer participation in the system.
implementation, utility cable strikes inside the airport
have declined by a factor of six (Zeiss, 2014). To estimate the impact of GITs on smart grids, the team
used a paper from Alaqeel & Suryanarayanan (2019),
Finally, there are potential applications of GIT in the
which presented a detailed cost-benefit analysis for
renewable energy sector that are consistent with the
KSA’s electricity infrastructure modernization as a
Kingdom’s strategic plans to reduce Saudi Arabia’s
result of the insertion of smart grid technologies. The
dependence on oil. For example, Ibarra et al (2017)
researchers estimated 14 different benefits (see Annex
used geospatial technology to assess KSA’s suitability
7.4 for more details) resulting from the adoption of
for a solar utility plant. To determine the technical and
smart grid technologies (SGTs). The benefits were
economic feasibility of investment in a parabolic trough
estimated across four types of operations: Advanced
collector (PTC) solar utility plant, a GIS-enabled tool
Transmission Operations (ATO), Advanced Distribution
evaluated georeferenced information about the terrain
Operations (ADO), Advanced Metering Infrastructure
and the spatial distribution of all energy resources.
(AMI), and Advanced Asset Management (AAM). Note
The resulting land suitability map identified the
that the authors of this report conducted a further
Northwest region of the country as most suitable for
analysis which determined that while only seven of the
such a plant’s location.
14 benefits are GIT-dependent, the researchers’ work
was still able to inform the authors’ estimates of smart
grid-enabled GIT benefits to the energy sector .

Table 6 presents the annual savings accrued from GIT in

the development of a smart grid infrastructure for KSA.
The estimated economic benefits are around US$ 585
million per year.

40 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
 BENEFITS ESTIMATION

TABLE 6: ANNUAL SAVINGS FROM A GIT-ENABLED SMART GRID (MILLIONS OF US$)

ANNUAL
BENEFIT DESCRIPTION
SAVINGS

Reducing transmission and distribution operation costs. This outcome is

realized by replacing manual network resources required to operate and $208.45
maintain the grid system with automated solutions.

Improving the quality of service and minimizing technical losses. $124.62

Increasing the continuity of service since smart grids

can reduce the frequency and duration of outages.
$6.80

Reducing meter-reading costs. For instance,

smart meters can transmit readings automatically.
$50.98

Reducing the restoration time associated

with system faults and failures.
$0.57

Reducing non-technical losses, including theft and

non-invoiced energy delivered to end users.
$159.74

Improving metering and billing accuracy. $13.59

Savings on the avoided replacement of traditional meters

due to damage or shorter life duration.
$20.39

TOTAL $585.13

Source: Alaqeel & Suryanarayanan

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 41
BENEFITS ESTIMATION

COMMERCE for 20 percent of all global seaborne trade (despite

accounting for less than 3 percent of global GDP)
Background (Moscatelli, 2018). Of this disproportionate share of
global sea trade, Saudi Arabia accounts for most of the
In the context of economic
transit activity. Saudi ports currently handle 90 percent
development, the commercial sector
of all Red Sea trade transits and 30 percent of all East
is a well-established driver of growth.
African trade transits (US Department of Commerce).
The World Bank estimates that over a billion people
Saudi authorities have recognized the importance of
have been lifted out of poverty since 1990 as a result
ports to their economy, and as part of Vision 2030 they
of economic growth facilitated by international open
plan to invest up to US$ 8 billion over the next decade in
trade. The effectiveness of the commerce sector as
technology and infrastructure at their ports.
a driver of growth, however, is dependent on how
successful policymakers are in creating a supportive
and enabling business environment. The most common
obstacles to developing a robust and appealing
commercial sector are lack of access to global markets,
anti-competitive regulatory environments, and limited
infrastructure capacity.

In 2018, seaborne commerce accounted for 70 percent

of all global trade by value and 80 percent of all trade
by volume (United Nations, 2018). Seaports play an
important role in supporting commercial activity and
trade. Improving the efficiency of port operations is
essential for economic growth because transport costs
represent a major component of trade costs. Efficient
ports have shorter turnaround times (loading and
unloading) and lower handling costs, and therefore have
a direct impact on the efficiency of the entire logistics
chain. A recent World Bank paper estimated that if ports
in the Indian and Western Pacific Oceans could become GIT in the ports sector
as efficient as the best port in the region, countries There are several different disruptive technologies
in the region would reduce their average maritime such as blockchain25, artificial intelligence (AI)26, and
transport costs by up to 14 percent and increase their the Internet of Things (IOT)27 that are underpinned by
exports by up to 2.2 percent (Herrera Dappe et al, 2017). location-based information and have become common
language in almost all domains pertaining to the
In KSA, the importance of trade is well established.
strategic planning of social and economic development.
International trade accounts for approximately 65
In the context of the port and maritime industry,
percent of the Kingdom’s GDP (World Bank, OECD) and
these technologies are essential components to what
seaports are becoming an increasingly important part
are known as “smart ports”28 strategies. Smart port
of trade operations both for KSA and the region more
technologies are becoming more and more important
generally. The Middle East alone is currently responsible
for an increasing number of countries participating in
global trade logistics as part of supply chains. Existing
GIT-enabled smart port applications provide significant
productivity gains around the world through their
contributions to the overall efficiency of port operations.

42 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
 BENEFITS ESTIMATION

GI PROVIDE A COMPREHENSIVE
APPROACH TO ENSURING THAT
ESSENTIAL FACILITIES CAN KEEP PACE
WITH INCREASING DEMANDS.

At the Netherlands’ Port of Rotterdam (the largest port Other efficiency-minded applications of GI include
in Europe, processing an average of 130,000 vessels digital multi-stakeholder systems that help to improve
per year), facilities have increasingly incorporated GIT interactions between all port partners (the port
and mapping technology into safety and efficiency authority, terminal operators, etc.). The impacts of these
considerations. Due to the success of these efforts, the systems are estimated to be significant, which is why
port’s authorities expanded investments in GI to include officials at Germany’s Port of Hamburg have invested
automation of several port functions and optimization heavily in smart-port technology in order to double the
of customs operations. By developing a “digital twin” of port’s capacity by 2025 without also having to double
the port, they improved real-time situational awareness its size. GIS technology has also allowed stakeholders at
for all the distinct elements of operations. They use 3D the Port of Hamburg to transition away from a paper-
renderings of all the moving parts of the port (ships, based customs system to a cloud-based system, and
infrastructure, personnel, etc.) to ensure faster and to use smart sensors to reduce the need for annual
more efficient vessel traffic management and accident inspections. The smart port system in Hamburg is
reduction44. The 3D rendering, called the Harbour Master estimated to reduce annual CO2 emissions at the port
PortMap, provides a detailed and real-time overview of by roughly 12,000 tons per year (Reidl, 2018).
port terminals, jetties, water depths, etc. The PortMap
As ports continue to grow and expand, so does the
is updated daily with the topographical and nautical
pressure on the supporting infrastructure that facilitate
information that is relevant to operational efficiency,
port activity. GI provide a comprehensive approach to
replacing physical maps. By 2030, Rotterdam expects
ensuring that essential facilities can keep pace with
to start regularly processing completely autonomous
increasing demands. In Drogheda Port in Ireland, large-
vessels. The combined benefits of increased outputs,
scale mapping, high level imagery, and orthophotography
fewer accidents, and the elimination of redundancies
have been incorporated into port operations to help deal
highlight how significantly GIT can improve even one of
with increasing demand29. Mapping is used to help plan
the busiest and most complex ports in the world.
and design new facilities, including road networks, to
Productivity can also be enhanced by improving support increased volume so that operations are immune
the performance of port equipment, enabling fewer to the pressure of increased traffic.
disruptions to operations and reduced processing times
per vessel. At the Port of Valencia in Spain, officials
have tested the use of GIT-enabled “black boxes” that
are installed on equipment including cranes, trucks, and
forklifts. This system analyzes information in real time,
alerts staff to any operational issues, and helps ensure
that cargo-handling equipment is functioning at peak
efficiency and is being properly and regularly maintained.
It is estimated that the system could eliminate up to
10 percent of operating costs by significantly reducing
equipment idle time and energy usage.

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 43
BENEFITS ESTIMATION
Use Case: Smart Ports
implementation in Jeddah
In addition to several existing efforts to improve
port efficiency in KSA—including an increase in port
specialization, policy reforms, etc.—Saudi Arabia’s
ports are well-suited to an increased integration of GI
technology into operations to improve productivity.
However, after discussing this topic with global and
local experts in the context of smarting, digitalizing, and
expanding automation of ports, it became clear to the
authors that some port operations in KSA are already
supported by GIT in some capacity, as most container
terminal operators are well-established and world-
renowned actors in the industry. That said, a gap still
remains between ports in KSA and the latest generation
of modern ports.
44 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
In principle, GIT can act as an essential enabler to
improve and strengthen port infrastructure development
and commercial operations, while remaining a profitable
and attractive business unit in the sector. At present,
the most frequent location-based service technologies
deployed in ports around the world are30:
• Wi-Fi (wireless networking technology that uses
radio waves)
• Li-Fi (Light Fidelity) refers to a relatively new wireless
form of Visible Light Communication technology that
uses light-emitting diodes as a medium for high-
speed communication
• RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) is the
technology that uses radio waves to read and capture
information stored on a tag attached to an object
• NFC (Near Field Communication) is a short-
range, wireless link that has evolved from the RFID
technology and can transfer small amounts of data
• GPS (Global Positioning System) is a satellite-based
navigation system made up of at least 24 satellites.
It provides geolocation and time information to a
GPS receiver anywhere on or near the Earth where
there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more
GPS satellites
This section presents options for introducing novel
GIT functionalities to the Port of Jeddah, based on
experiences observed abroad, and with the objective
of improving the efficiency of essential operative cycles
and optimizing the maintenance of existing facilities as
well as that of infrastructure planning and development.
The port of Jeddah was selected as it is considered as
one of the most important ports for foreign trade in
KSA (except the trade of oil products). The port was
established in 1976 and grew rapidly to the second-
largest port in the region. The consolidated volume
 BENEFITS ESTIMATION

of containers handled by the specialized container
terminal in the port classifies the port into the category
of “high throughput”. It is expected that the results and
conclusions achieved from this analysis can serve as
benchmarks for the other KSA ports that predominantly
handle containers.
The analysis estimates key performance indicators
(KPIs) from 2020 to 2035 for the following operative
areas: capacity of berths (number of containers handled
over the quay side per year), productivity of quay side
equipment (ship to shore gantry cranes per year),
performance of berthing facilities (per hour) and dwell
time of containers in the port. The projections are
calculated for the as-is or baseline scenario (current
conditions) versus a potential scenario where GITs
are introduced. The potential scenario is estimated
using KPIs observed in medium and high performing
international container terminals, that adopted smart
ports capabilities enabled by geospatial information.
Three potential benefits were identified as a result of
this analysis:
• Cost savings from more efficient Ship to Shore Gantry
(SSG) cranes: As GIT can improve the productivity
per SSG31, the port of Jeddah could keep using
their currently installed capacity and forego future
investments in additional SSGs.
• Savings from shorter port stays for vessels: As GIT can
improve the Berth Hour Performance (BHP)32, or ship
productivity, vessels stays in the Port of Jeddah can
be shortened and cost saved.
• Savings from improved container management:
As GIT can reduce the dwell time of discharged
containers within the port premises by improving the
total container turnaround time, operating costs can
be reduced.
Table 7 presents the total savings accrued from GIT
from the hypothetical introduction of GIT in the port
of Jeddah. The economic benefits estimated are
approximately US$ 56.2 to US$ 122 million per year.
Further details on the analysis and the calculations are
shown in Annex 7.3.

TABLE 7: SUMMARY OF POTENTIAL ECONOMIC BENEFITS FROM GIT IN THE PORT OF JEDDAH (2020 -2035)

POTENTIAL MEDIUM HIGH

Performance Scenario Performance Scenario
BENEFITS (Millions of US$) (Millions of US$)

Cost savings from

MORE EFFICIENT SHIP TO 43.4 133.7
SHORE GANTRY CRANES

Costs savings from

SHORTER PORT STAYS FOR VESSELS 56.9 150.8

Cost savings from

IMPROVED CONTAINER MANAGEMENT 396.1 792.03

TOTAL 2020 - 2035 496.4 1,076.8

Source: Author’s calculations

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 45
BENEFITS ESTIMATION
PUBLIC SAFETY
Public safety specifically refers to
any actions or policies undertaken
by the authorities to protect the
welfare of the general public. Public safety in
modern society has grown to encompass a range of
important public functions including national security,
law enforcement, border strategies, and effective
road traffic management. Particularly in developing
contexts, the ability to curb crime in urbanizing areas
and ensure basic public safety is critical to creating an
environment that is supportive of economic growth
and foreign investment. At every level of government,
the prevalence of crime often comes with significant
economic and social costs. This includes all direct
economic losses suffered by victims of crimes as well
as any associated costs including property damage,
medical care costs, and government spending on
policing and corrections programs. Successful efforts
at curbing criminal disruptions to public safety can
contribute to the creation of an environment that is
enabling to economic activity.
27
The General Directorate for Public Security has as its objectives preventing all types of crimes before they occur, protecting lives and property,
arresting crime perpetrators, securing administrative and technical development and using modern technologies to develop and improve
administrative operations.
46 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
Public safety considerations must also carefully weigh
the cost-effectiveness of policies, to ensure that any
benefits derived from reduced crime are not negated
by high costs to attain them. Similarly, effective traffic
management and road safety can be important
facilitators of economic growth, and it is therefore
important for governments to ensure that their road
networks can guarantee the safe and timely movement
of goods and people. The World Bank estimates that
every year 1.35 million people globally lose their lives
while driving, cycling, or walking on roads. Another
50 million become seriously injured and in need of
emergency medical care. Even modest improvements
to these outcomes would produce very substantial
benefits—both in the form of lives saved and the
avoided costs of accidents.
In KSA, the General Directorate for Public Security
(Ministry of Interior) is the government entity primarily
responsible for maintaining security in the country27.
It is comprised of five sections, each responsible for
one of the five identified “pillars” of public safety.
These include Special Tasks and Duties, Traffic, Police,
Research and Investigation, and Criminal Evidence. The
General Directorate for Public Safety has identified the

inclusion of new technologies into its organizational
operations as part of its stated objectives, with to
the goal of automating more of its functions and
advancing the government’s wider “e-government”
priorities. The administration of emergency medical
services (EMS) in most of KSA falls to the Saudi
Red Crescent Authority (SRCA), which as of 2015
operated approximately 380 first aid centers and
about 2,000 ambulances. Between 2017 and 2021,
the government’s cumulative expenditure on the
healthcare sector is estimated at US$ 130 billion,
with a significant proportion of that amount going
to strengthening the country’s capacity to provide
adequate care in emergency situations.
GIT in Public Safety
In countries with densely populated urban areas,
most emergency services (ambulances, firefighters,
police, etc.) are dependent on road infrastructure
to function properly. As such, the capacity of GIT
to significantly improve emergency response times
through location-allocation optimization and routing
technology is an important potential benefit. Such
data could include, for example, information on road
closures that to enables traffic officials to identify
blockages or slowdowns and reroute traffic to minimize
delays. GIT has been incorporated into emergency
response systems in major cities across the world.
In the US city of Baltimore, Maryland, the city’s fire
department incorporated GIT into its operations to cut
costs through improved response times. Using spatial
information, officials were able to map and visualize
firehouses and vehicles, allocating them to more
proximate accessible geographic areas of coverage.
This change improved response call times by 5 percent
(Shields, 2015). They were also able to analyze the
spatial data to establish guidelines for the department,
determine if they were meeting national response time
standards, and identify possible areas of improvement.
Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 47
BENEFITS ESTIMATION
Traffic management is not foreign to KSA; in Riyadh
there are existing efforts to reduce rush-hour congestion
and traffic accidents through the incorporation of GI
into the city’s traffic management system. Specifically,
the city of Riyadh contracted two companies to
improve its traffic management infrastructure. The
Arriyadh Development Authority (ADA) worked with
TransCore—a transportation technology company—
in 2015 to design and deploy an advanced traffic
management system that improved traffic flow by
automatically adjusting traffic signal operations
according to traffic conditions. Also in 2015m the High
Commission for the Development of Arriyadh and the
Riyadh Traffic Department commissioned a project with
FLIR to develop intelligent traffic sensors that monitor
traffic speeds on the city’s road network.
Use case: Ambulance Routing
and Placement optimization
Deaths caused by road traffic crashes makes up 4.7
percent of all mortalities in KSA, as compared to the
UK, the US and Australia, where such fatalities hardly
exceed 1.7 percent. Evidence from the World Health
Organization (WHO) shows Saudi Arabia as having
the 32nd-highest traffic death rate per capita globally,
with approximately 9 percent of accidents resulting in
a fatality (WHO, 2018). Similarly, road fatalities in Saudi
Arabia have increased over the years. In the last decade,
BENEFITS ESTIMATION
THE PERCEIVED SUCCESS…IS BASED ON
THE NUMBER OF EMERGENCIES TO WHICH
AMBULANCES RESPOND WITHIN THE FIRST
EIGHT MINUTES OF DEPLOYMENT.
traffic-related deaths per 100,000 people increased
from 17.4 to 24. KSA has the highest share of traffic
death rates, as compared to high-income countries, with
an accident to death ratio of 32:1. Traffic fatalities are the
main cause of death among 16 to 30-year-old males in
Saudi Arabia (Al-Hawani, 2019).
Research has shown that prehospital care in the
aftermath of an accident can positively impact patient
outcomes in emergency situations (Schull et al., 2003;
Murad et al., 2012; Huang et al., 2016). Much of the
research into ambulance response times uses the widely
accepted standard of eight minutes for urban areas
(Fitch, 2005). In other words, the perceived success
of any particular system is based on the number of
emergencies to which ambulances respond within the
first eight minutes of deployment. KSA has invested
heavily in launching university programs in Emergency
Medical Services (EMS) dedicated to training highly
qualified EMS professionals. These rapid advancements
notwithstanding, the emergency medical system in
Saudi Arabia still faces challenges that impede the
ability of healthcare workers (particularly emergency
doctors and ambulance EMS staff) to provide the best
possible care to patients. The average ambulance
response time in KSA is approximately 12 minutes, with
only one region posting response times lower than nine
minutes (Saudi General Authority for Statistics, 2016).
48 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
This section estimates the economic benefits of using
GIT to improve ambulance routing and prepositioning,
consequently reducing mortality from traffic accidents.
Using data from the Saudi Red Crescent Authority
(SRCA) and the Ministry of Interior, the authors created
a database including regional data on traffic accidents,
road fatality rates and average response times. The
analysis of this data included an assessment of four
different scenarios (reductions to current response
times of 16, 20, 23, and 30 percent) using GI-based
prepositioning for ambulances or intelligent routing
to improve response times. Scenario 1 was developed
based on findings in a study by Gonzalez et al. (2011),
which found that GIS-based intelligent routing of
ambulances reduced the average response times of
ambulances by an average of 16 percent. Scenario
2 uses results from a study by Panahi & Delavar
(2009), which found that the researchers’ intelligent
deployment strategy reduced the average response
time for ambulances by 20 percent. Scenario 3 was
based on results from a study by the US Federal
Highway Commission (2006), which found that the use
of intelligent vehicle routing can reduce emergency
response time by as much as 23 percent. Finally, Scenario
4 drew from a study by Ong et al. (2010), which found
that the strategic prepositioning of ambulances reduced
the average ambulance response time for out-of-
hospital cardiac arrests (OOHHA) by 30 percent.
 BENEFITS ESTIMATION

The next step in the analysis was to determine
the impact on traffic accident fatalities of reduced
ambulance response times, using the paper by Byrne et
al (2019) that measured the relationship between EMS
response times and motor vehicle crash (MVC) mortality
at the population level in counties across the US. This
report’s authors used these findings to estimate new
fatality rates for each scenario (See Annex 7.6 for more
details). Finally, to monetize the lives saved, the authors
used the Value of Statistical Life which represents an
aggregate of individuals’ willingness to pay (WTP) for
a reduction in their mortality risks28. Results in Table 8
show that the estimated economic value of the additional
lives that would be saved by using GI technologies to
determine ambulance locations could potentially reach
between US$ 2 billion and US$ 4 billion annually.

TABLE 8: ESTIMATED ECONOMIC VALUE OF LIVES SAVED

FATALITIES AVOIDED
TOTAL NUMBER
REGION
OF ACCIDENTS
Scenario 1 Scenario 2 Scenario 3 Scenario 4

AL-RIYADH 79,884 149 186 214 280

MAKKAH AL-MOKARRAMAH 18,299 49 61 70 92

AL-MADINAH AL-MONAWARAH 20,547 62 77 89 116

AL-QASEEM 17,510 31 39 44 58

HAIL 6,955 27 34 39 51

EASTERN REGION 45,077 86 108 124 162

TABOUK 10,034 36 46 52 68

NORTHERN BORDERS 10,705 11 14 16 21

AL-BAHA 186 14 17 20 26

JAZAN 19,572 73 91 104 136

NAJRAN 3,124 25 31 36 46

ASEER 25,964 98 123 142 185

AL-JOUF 3,652 15 18 21 27

TOTAL VALUE IN BILLIONS OF US$ $2.10 $2.62 $3.01 $3.93

Source: Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Ministry of Interior and Authors’ calculations

28
This approach is more appropriate for evaluating the full economic costs of premature mortality, which encompass the loss of many other things
that individuals value apart from their paychecks, including consumption, leisure, good health, and simply being alive. This value is reflected in the
WTP, which captures the marginal trade-offs that individuals are willing to make to reduce their chances of dying. The value of statistical life (VSL)
represents the sum of many individuals’ WTP for marginal reductions in their mortality risks. It is not the value of any single person’s life or death,
nor does it represent a society’s judgment as to what that value should be.

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 49
BENEFITS ESTIMATION
PUBLIC HEALTH
Many countries prioritize improvements
to the health sector, due to its importance
in achieving critical development goals
including poverty reduction and equitable growth. Many
developing countries face challenges in closing large
gaps in coverage, particularly for poor and historically
underserved communities. These systems also often
struggle to ensure high quality and affordable health
services. The World Health Organization (WHO)
estimates that the annual out-of-pocket expenditure on
healthcare for people in developing countries amounts
to over half a billion dollars. This understandably creates
financial difficulties for many, pushing 90 million people
into extreme poverty every year.
It is also important to note that public health refers not
just to the absence of sickness, but also to individuals’
ability to make a living in ways that are not harmful
to their health. Evidence suggests that countries with
weak health and education outcomes also find it more
difficult to generate sustained growth. Research from
the WHO suggests that a 10 percent improvement in
life expectancy at birth is associated with a 0.4 percent
increase in economic growth. Improvements to public
health can have a range of knock-on benefits to the
economy and society at large. These includes avoided
costs from production losses due to worker illness,
increased worker production from more nutritious diets,
lower absenteeism, improved learning, etc. (Mexican
Commission on Macroeconomics and Health, 2004).
The resources saved through improved public health
can be put to use in other, more productive areas of the
economy and directed to further improving individual
well-being.
50 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
In KSA, the public health sector is overseen primarily
by the Ministry of Health (MOH). The ministry is
responsible for most of the financing, operations, and
management of all health facilities in KSA. In an effort
to modernize its management of the public health
system, the MOH has developed in many regions of
the country autonomous hospital systems capable of
functioning without its direct supervision. Other efforts
to modernize the management of public hospitals
have included partnership with foreign governments
(the Netherlands, Germany, and Thailand) and private
healthcare companies (WHO, 2011). The increasing
number of public hospitals in KSA (31 facilities as
of 2011) is expected to provide several long-term
benefits to the sector, including improved medical and
managerial experience, flexible budgeting, and clearer
lines of responsibility. According to the World Bank,
life expectancy in Saudi Arabia is 76 years for women
and 73 years for men. At 12 deaths per 1,000 deaths,
infant mortality in the country is low and continues to
trend lower. Heart disease is the most common cause of
death in KSA, although there have been significant and
worrisome increases in the prevalence of other non-
communicable diseases such as diabetes, hypertension,
cancer, genetic blood disorders and childhood obesity
(US Center for Disease Control, 2018).

GIT in Public Health
The health sector offers a range of possible applications
for GI technology and provides ample opportunities
for innovation in many contexts across the industry.
Both public and private actors around the world
have begun exploring ways to best exploit the spatial
visualization and analytical power of geospatial data.
Some applications of GI include tracking immunization
programs, mapping service areas, and conducting
health policy research. Research by Soares, Dewalle, &
Marsh (2017) highlights the ways that GI, specifically
patient geographic information, can be used to inform
the siting of telemedicine locations to maximize ease
of access to the communities they serve. Governments
across Asia, facing increasingly frequent epidemiological
outbreaks, have built geospatial technologies into their
contact tracing protocols and other critical parts of their
health infrastructure. These investments helped many
countries in the region navigate sustained SARS and
MERS outbreaks, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic.
For example, in an effort to monitor and contain the
spread of COVID-19, health officials in the Republic of
Korea implemented tracing, quarantining, and social
distancing measures that were mainly spatial in nature.
Korean authorities used GPS data from phones, cars,
credit card transactions, and CCTV footage to monitor
people’s movements and track the spread of the
COVID-19 virus. Similarly, health officials in Singapore
were able to conduct contact tracing using location
data from cellphone apps, while China combined this
practice with the use of a QR code to designate an
individual’s health status.
Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 51
BENEFITS ESTIMATION
Use Case: Wireless Emergency
Alerts to avoid harmful pollution
Four of the top ten causes of death in Saudi Arabia are
attributable to air pollution, which is recognized today
as one of the major human health risks. Exposure to
air pollution, both ambient and household, increases
a person’s risk of contracting diseases such as lung
cancer, stroke, heart disease, and chronic bronchitis.
Air pollution is also an impediment to economic
development. By causing illness and premature death,
air pollution reduces quality of life, which reduces
productive labor, which ultimately reduces incomes
in these countries (World Bank and IHME (2016). In a
forthcoming report, the World Bank and KSA’s Ministry
of Environment, Water and Agriculture (MEWA), find
that ambient air pollution in Riyadh is about four to
six times the level recommended by the World Health
Organization; concentrations in Dammam are about four
to six times; in Jeddah two to three times; and in Makkah
three to four times the recommended maximum.
According to the same report, most of the pollution
comes from anthropogenic sources. About one fourth
comes from natural sources, such as geological dust
from sandstorms.
This section estimates the impact on mortality of
developing a location-specific Wireless Emergency
Alerts (WEA) system to warn citizens about a coming
sandstorm or dangerous levels of air quality. GIT-
enabled WEAs can deliver geo-targeted alerts to
100 percent of the target area, with no more than a
0.1-mile overshoot. Emergency alerts impact people’s
physiological arousal, emotional response, cognitive
processing, and behavior. People respond to these
messages as a threat, and the audible alert tone that
accompanies the messages triggers the recipients’
stress response (UCLA, 2016). All this is to say that
people take emergency alerts seriously—they are
effective at prompting people to adjust their behavior
in order to, in this case, significantly reduce their
BENEFITS ESTIMATION

exposure to air pollution if they receive an alert about

poor air quality or an approaching sandstorm (Barwick
et al, 2019). It has been proven that less exposure to
air pollution leads to dramatic reductions in asthma,
heart attacks, and the number of low birthweight and
premature babies (Wen, Balluz, & Mokdad, 2009).

According to the World Bank and IHME (2016), in 2013

the monetary costs of premature mortality in KSA was
US$ 30.2 billion (in 2011 U.S. dollars, PPP-adjusted;
2.05 percent GDP equivalent) as measured in terms of
6,285 premature deaths associated with air pollution.
Assuming a conservative scenario where the premature
death figure is the same as in 2013, the authors
calculated the potential reduction in annual mortality
due to the introduction of a WEA for three different
scenarios (low: 5 percent reduction, baseline/medium:
7 percent reduction and high: 10 percent reduction).
The resulting estimates suggest that this system could
potentially save between 314 and 629 human lives from
pollution-related death every year (see Annex 4.6 for
more details). To monetize the lives saved, the authors
use the KSA estimated Value of Statistical Life to
estimate that the total welfare losses29 avoided due to
the WEA system would range from approximately US$
975 to US$ 1,950 million.

TABLE 9: ANNUAL POLLUTION-RELATED COST AND LIFE SAVINGS FROM WEA (MILLIONS OF US$)

LOW (5%) BASELINE (7%) HIGH (10%)

WELFARE LOSSES AVOIDED 974.2 1,363.8 1,948.4

ANNUAL REDUCTION IN DEATHS 314 440 629

Source: Authors’ calculations

29
This approach is more appropriate for evaluating the full economic costs of premature mortality, which encompass the loss of many other things
that individuals value apart from their paychecks, including consumption, leisure, good health, and simply being alive.

52 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia

INFRASTRUCTURE
Access to basic infrastructure services is
essential not only for creating economic
opportunities, but also for creating an
enabling environment in which these opportunities can
be realized. The World Bank estimates that 840 million
people globally live more than 2 km from the nearest
paved road, 4 billion people lack internet, and 1 billion
people currently lack access to the internet30. The
transportation sector is particularly critical to economic
development because the safe and convenient movement
of goods and people form the basis of any modern
economy. Useful investments include roads connecting
rural areas to the rest of the country’s economy, and safe
transport to health and educational facilities.
KSA boasts a large inter and intra city road network.
Between 2007 and 2017, KSA invested US$ 106 billion
to developing its transport infrastructure: roads, ports,
railways, and airports (Saudi Ministry of Transport,
2017). In 2018 alone, KSA invested US$ 2.4 billion in
roads. As of 2018, the Kingdom has over 67,000 km
of paved roads—including 5,300 km of expressways,
12,700 two-lane highways, and 49,000 km one-lane
roads, 140,000 intra city roads, and 145,100 km of
unpaved rural roads31. There is an estimated backlog of
US$ 1.107 billion in maintaining the Kingdom’s roads,
due to insufficient fund allocation32. As a result, the
quality of the road network had been deteriorating as
evidenced by the fall in the nation’s road quality ranking
by the World Economic Forum from 12 in 2012 to 34 in
2017. Recent efforts have yielded results, as the quality
of road ranking rebounded to 26 in 2019.33 Inadequate
maintenance and the resulting poor quality of roads
are partially responsible for a poor traffic safety record
within the Kingdom. Roads in KSA rank among the most
30
World Bank. “Understanding Poverty -Topics: Infrastructure” Text/HTML. Accessed December 3, 2020. https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/
infrastructure
31
Ibid
32
The Saudi Arabian Ministry of Transport (2017) “The National Transport Strategy 2030”
33
World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Reports 2011-2012, 2017-2018, and 2019
34
BIM provides the 3D design, cost, and schedule of the road to be built while GIS provides the information on the surrounding built and natural
environments.
Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 53
BENEFITS ESTIMATION
fatal globally, with 27.4 and 28.8 fatalities per 100,000
inhabitants in 2017 and 2018, respectively (World Bank).
This poor safety record is echoed in a recent assessment
by the World Bank, which found that only 65 percent
of the Kingdom’s roads achieved the minimum-
suggested standard necessary to ensure infrastructure
safety according to the International Road Assessment
Program (iRAP) (World Bank, 2018; Saudi Ministry
of Transport, 2016). Furthermore, road safety culture
is lacking, and a majority of the road infrastructure
is in need of improvements for safety features such
as intersection designs, exit and entries to highways,
median barriers, and traffic enforcement police and
emergency crews. These challenges are outlined in
greater detail in Annex 4.5.
GI in the Road Sector
Geospatial Information Technologies have been widely
adopted in the road construction sector across the
past several years. These new technologies, which
provide crucial data on the precise location of assets
within the context of the surrounding environment,
are transforming the sector at each step of the project
lifecycle: planning, design, surveying, construction,
operation, and maintenance.
During the design and planning phase, GIT can aid
in identifying deficiencies in the road network and
generate more accurate cost estimates, more quickly,
and with fewer unbudgeted changes. Integrating GIS
and BIM (Building Information Modeling) provides
greater analytical and cost-estimation capacity34. In
Malaysia, for example, engineers developed a 3D “digital
twin” of a project to upgrade the main trunk road on
the island of Borneo from two lanes to a four-lane
expressway. These information systems enabled the
project to remain on time and under budget. Within
two years, the cost of investing in BIM had paid for
itself: roughly US$ 40 million in costs were saved as the
result of the US$ 30 million investment in BIM and IT
digitization. In addition, the project created jobs
BENEFITS ESTIMATION

SURVEYORS WERE AMONG THE

EARLIEST ADOPTERS OF GPS, QUICKLY
RECOGNIZING ITS POTENTIAL TO REDUCE
THEIR LABOR COSTS.

and built GIS capacity within the construction sector
through its training of young engineers to use these
new technologies. BIM is also able to reduce conflicts
and changes during construction, which lowers overall
costs and improves productivity through a reduction
in rework35. In fact, the UK, Finland, and Singapore
have all mandated the use of BIM in publicly funded
infrastructure projects, precisely to resolve delays and
cost overruns36.
During the survey phase, geospatial data are collected,
managed, and stored using a variety of tools including
satellites, light detection and ranging (LiDAR),
photogrammetry, drones, and robotic total stations37.
Surveyors were among the earliest adopters of GPS,
quickly recognizing its potential to reduce their labor
costs. One estimate suggests that the advent of GPS
yielded an average benefit of US$ 2.7 billion per year
between 2010 and 2019 in the United States. From a
nationwide review, this same study found that labor
represents an average of 51.1 percent of total surveying
costs and that the use of GPS led to a reduction in labor
costs of 44.8 percent (with a standard deviation of
0.19) (O’Connor 2019). Another study of the US Federal
Highway Administration (Mallela, 2019) evaluated the
use of drones for mapping and measuring stockpiles
of materials in quarries. The study demonstrated that
the cost of implementing GIS technology is minimal
as compared to more traditional surveying tools. The
efficiency gains in data collection due to time and labor
costs savings were estimated at 90 percent. In addition,
the researchers identified qualitative benefits including
the visual documentation of reports, reduced errors, and
the ability to rapidly capture and share data.
During the construction phase, GIT contributes to the
ability to successfully and rapidly resolve unexpected
events, thereby avoiding excessive delays and cost
overruns. For example, when a surprise delay in the
delivery of materials occurs, digital information systems
can update the entire production chain within a few
seconds.38 Another major source of delays during road
construction are conflicts with and relocations of utility
lines and other utilities-related infrastructure. About
four million excavations to install or repair buried utility
pipes and cables occur on the United Kingdom’s road
network each year. Not knowing the location of these
assets can cause project delays, increase costs, and
injuries for workers. In the US, an underground utility is
hit every minute39. These are avoidable risks: ground-
penetrating radars combined with GIS can be used to
map the location of underground utilities. Similarly, in
the US state of Utah, the Department of Transportation
(UDOT) carried out a pilot where they found that the
use of drones, tablets, and GPS rovers for real-time
monitoring the construction progress could led to a 50
percent efficiency increase.

35
Shaaban, Kaled and Abid Nadeem (2015) “Professionals’ perception towards using building information modelling in the highway
and infrastructure projects,” Int. J. Engineering Management and Economics, 5(3/4): pp. 273-289. https://www.researchgate.net/
publication/282649412_Professionals’_perception_towards_using_building_information_modelling_BIM_in_the_highway_
and_infrastructure_project
36
In the US, the construction industry in general has yet to adopt such a platform. The various actors use different software platforms that too
often do not sync with one another (https://www.constructiondive.com/news/bim-is-cutting-construction-costs-but-there-is-no-
us-standard-in-sight/512987/).
37
ESRI Brochure “GIS Solutions for Highway and Roadway Management” https://www.esri.com/library/brochures/pdfs/gis-sols-for-
highway.pdf

Allen (2018) “Road Building: Ahead of the Curb” international construction. https://www.khl.com/international-construction/road-
38

building-ahead-of-the-curb-/133477.article
39
Agarwal et al (2016) “Imagining Construction’s Digital Future,” McKinsey & Company, https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/capital-
projects-and-infrastructure/our-insights/imagining-constructions-digital-future accessed 2/6/2020

54 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
 BENEFITS ESTIMATION

During the operation and maintenance phases, GIT is
particularly effective at yielding potential time and cost
savings. The Oregon Department of Transportation
commissioned Oregon State University (OSU) to
evaluate the benefits of using drones in bridge
inspections. OSU concluded drones are most effective
for routine bridge inspections. Defects such as cracks,
pack rust, and loose and missing hardware were easily
identifiable in the imagery acquired at the four
evaluated bridges. Additionally, drones can often
improve viewing angles and resolution over what
can be achieved from the ground, since drones can
maneuver near the bridge and use optical zoom
from various angles. Cost savings were computed by
comparing the costs of using the technology to those
of prior inspections using direct visual inspections. The
average savings in personnel time were estimated to
be 10 percent (ranging from 3 to 15 percent). Inspection
field time decreased by 20 percent while office time
increased by 30 percent. The net time savings worked
out to be 10 percent, because the time savings from
inspections were much larger than the increase in office
time (Mallela 2019).
Use Case: Intelligent Road Paving
As indicated above, KSA is currently facing an estimated
backlog of US$ 1.1 billion in road maintenance. On top
of that, the Kingdom plans to invest more than US$
165 billion through 2030 to strengthen its transport
infrastructure, including US$ 63 billion for roads
specifically. These projects will tackle road safety,
improve traffic congestion and enhance connectivity40.
The projects would be funded through a mix of public
and private sector financing41 and are intended to meet
three specific goals: (i) the receipt of an at least a three-
star iRAP rating on all intercity roads; (ii) the reduction
of traffic fatalities to below 15 per 100,000 inhabitants
by 2025; and (iii) improved mobility and reduced
congestion in urban areas.
To illustrate the potential savings that GIT can deliver
in road construction and maintenance, the authors
consider the use of Intelligent Compacting (IC) as part
of pavement and roadway surface construction. IC is
a technology used to achieve the required pavement
compaction and is enabled by Automated Machine
Guidance (AMG), which involves the integration of
positioning tools into construction machinery. During
the compacting process, it is critical to achieve a uniform
and specific material density. This can be difficult using
conventional methods. Upfront costs of IC compacting
are relatively low, although training is necessary for
mastery of the systems and process. The technology
results in lower costs at the time of compacting as well
as long-term cost savings, since roads paved using
intelligent compacting last longer than those paved
under conventional technologies42.

40
Global Infrastructure Hub: Saudi Arabia, gihub.org/countries/Saudi-Arabia/
41
The Kingdom will need to raise SAR 115 billion (US$ 31 billion) from the private sector and elsewhere—including SAR 19.5 billion (US$ 5.3
billion) for roads—to cover the funding gap. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-26/saudi-crown-prince-to-launch-
425-billion-infrastructure-plan https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-28/saudi-arabia-to-raise-36-billion-for-
transportation-investment
42
Savan et al (2015) suggest that intelligent compacting lengthens the life of the pavement by between 10 and 26 years and cost 37% less.

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 55
BENEFITS ESTIMATION
Given uncertainty regarding the quality of the data
that the authors were able to obtain and the efficiency
of IC in KSA context, the authors took a conservative
approach that assumes that IC will only increase the
lifespan of paving by five years. They then modeled
three cost savings scenarios (see annex 7.8 for more
details) to estimate an annual cost of approximately
US$ 4.51 billion to maintain the current road network
TABLE 10: SUMMARY OF POTENTIAL ECONOMIC BENEFITS FROM GIT FOR ROAD MAINTENANCE (BILLIONS OF US$)
SCENARIOS
BASE SCENARIO
(37% cost savings/5yrs extended lifespan)
SCENARIO 1
(18.5% cost savings/5yrs extended lifespan)
SCENARIO 2
(0% cost savings/5yrs extended lifespan)
Source: Author’s calculations
56 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
in KSA using a conventional compacting method. The
estimated cost of maintaining that same road network
using IC, by contrast, is between US$ 1.89 billion and
US$ 3 billion. Assuming a discount rate of 7.5 percent
and a time period of 15 years, the potential savings from
using IC ranges from US$ 13.3 to US$ 23.1 billion, which is
equivalent to an annual benefit of between US$ 1.51 and
US$ 2.62 billion.
ANNUAL
SAVINGS
$2.62
$2.06
$1.51
 BENEFITS ESTIMATION

SUMMARY OF EXPECTED BENEFITS

The following summary table shows all the expected certain assumptions and subject to the aforementioned
benefits of geospatial information and technologies for limitations and caveats. These estimates are presented
KSA. These benefits were estimated using data provided as ranges and for each sector separately.
directly by KSA ministries and agencies, adopting

TABLE 11: SUMMARY OF ESTIMATED BENEFITS FROM GIT BY SECTOR USE CASE

SECTOR US$ PER YEAR

DISASTER RISK MANAGEMENT 3.8 million – 47.8 million

EDUCATION  63 million – 239 million

ENERGY  564 million

COMMERCE  56.2 – 122 million

PUBLIC SAFETY  2.1 billion – 3.9 billion

PUBLIC HEALTH  1.6 billion – 3.2 billion

INFRASTRUCTURE 1.5 billion – 2.6 billion

Source: Authors’ calculations

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 57
5
 SHAPING THE VALUE OF GEOSPATIAL DATA: RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

Shaping the Value of Geospatial Data:

RECOMMENDATIONS AND
CONCLUSIONS
Given that geospatial information provides sizeable benefits for consumers,
businesses, and society overall, it is useful to consider the different ways that
governments can help maximize benefits and become geospatially enabled. To
this end, GASGI has decided to prioritize the promotion of the vital and integrative
role that geospatial information plays in the economy, as well as the development
of related enabling architectures. One key enabling architecture is a Spatial Data
Infrastructure (SDI), which in its broadest definition includes not only ICT technologies
but also their coordination, as well as the establishment of the policies, standards,
and human resources to acquire, process, store, distribute, and use geospatial data
(Clinton, 1994). Effective SDIs reduce redundancy in geospatial data creation and
maintenance, reduce the costs of geospatial data creation and maintenance, improve
access to geospatial data, and improve the accuracy of geospatial data used by the
broader community (National Research Council, 2001).

GASGI also very actively participates in the United Nations committee on Global
Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM). GASGI chairs the UN-GGIM’s Arab
Committee and has also contributed to the development of the Integrated Geospatial

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 59
SHAPING THE VALUE OF GEOSPATIAL DATA: RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS
Information Framework (IGIF), which is designed to
guide the development and strengthening of geospatial
information, as well as the management of relevant
infrastructures in developing and developed countries.
The IGIF helps countries establish their SDIs and offers
support in several additional areas as well: moving
toward e-economies; improving services to citizens;
building capacity for using geospatial technology;
enhancing informed government decision-making
processes; and taking practical actions to achieve a
digital transformation (UN, 2019).
The IGIF identifies three pillars and nine strategic
pathways to guide governments’ implementation of
SDIs in such a way as to deliver sustainable social,
economic and environmental development. These pillars
and strategic pathways can also be seen as areas of
influence that GASGI can use to shape and maximize the
43
PETs comprise a broad suite of technologies and approaches—from a piece of tape masking a webcam to advanced cryptographic techniques.
The British Academy and Royal Society report, “Data Management and Use: Governance in the 21st Century,” published on June 2017, explored
a subset of five PETs identified during the scoping of the project as being particularly promising to enable privacy-aware data collection,
analysis, and dissemination of results: 1. Homomorphic encryption. 2. Differential privacy. 3. Secure multi-party computation. 4. Trusted execution
environments. 5. Personal data stores (McCarthy and Fourniol, 2020)
60 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
value of geospatial information. For example, consider
a case where GASGI wants to publish a collection of
geographical data that may carry risks for individuals
and organizations (i.e. health surveys). How can GASGI
unlock the value of GI while ensuring acceptable levels
of risk for individuals and communities? The answer is
the creation of appropriate governance mechanisms.
Governments can establish geospatial data institutions,
shape policy, pass laws, and provide financial support.
With regard to technology, GASGI can play an active role
in data collection, support innovation, and set industry
standards, such as Privacy Enhancing Technologies
(PETs)43, which can help address the tension between
making use of data and protecting both the individuals
and organizations that generate or are subjects within
datasets (McCarthy and Fourniol, 2020). GASGI
can also form partnerships with firms engaged in
geospatial data provision, promote education in fields
that support geospatial information technology and
analysis, and engage with relevant actors in the industry.
Governments should work with major public and private
sector data holders to identify barriers to sharing data,
and promote sharing frameworks that allow safe and
equitable data sharing between organizations.
As it pursues its mission, GASGI should keep top of
mind the requirement that any SDI be planned and
implemented considering environmental, social,
institutional, and economic and financial principles,
which are the key pillars for a sustainable infrastructure
investment. Sustainable infrastructure not only
preserves, restores and integrates the natural
environment, including biodiversity and ecosystems,
but also supports the sustainable and efficient use
of natural resources, limits all types of pollution and
contributes to a low-carbon, resilient, and resource-
efficient economy. Sustainable infrastructure is
inclusive (it serves all stakeholders, including the poor)
and contributes to enhanced livelihoods and social
wellbeing over the lifecycle of the project. Sustainable
infrastructure is aligned with national and international
commitments and is based on transparent and
consistent governance systems. It helps in creating
local capacity (including providing knowledge transfer
mechanisms and promoting innovative thinking and
project management), enhancing sustainability
 SHAPING THE VALUE OF GEOSPATIAL DATA: RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS
BOX 3: IGIF PILLARS
The Governance pillar includes the leadership,
administration model, and institutional arrangements
to strengthen multidisciplinary and multi-sectoral
participation. It involves the legal and policy
framework necessary to institute national geospatial
information legislation and policies that enable the
availability, accessibility, exchange, application,
and management of geospatial information. It also
establishes the business model for how the system
is to be financed, such as by developing financial
partnerships and identifying investment needs and
funding sources.
The Technology pillar addresses data, innovation,
and standards. It provides the geospatial data
framework and custodianship guidelines for collecting
best practices and managing the integrated and
authoritative geospatial information required for cross-
sector and multidisciplinary collaboration. It recognizes
that technology and processes are continuously
evolving and creates opportunities for the innovation
and systemic change, and developing technical
and engineering capacities as well as systems for
data collection, monitoring and evaluation. Finally,
sustainable infrastructure needs to generate a positive
net economic return, taking into account all benefits
and costs over the project lifecycle, including positive
and negative externalities and spillovers. It must also
generate an adequate risk-adjusted rate of return for
project investors and therefore, it should generate a
sound revenue stream based on adequate cost recovery
and supported, where necessary, by the availability of
payments (Serebrisky et al, 2018).
It is particularly important for GASGI to identify, early
on, the business model of the SDI. A key element is to
ensure that there are sufficient revenues, either from
community contributions or direct contributions from
the government, to cover the efficient costs of service
delivery. For example, in its Geospatial Strategy (UK
Geospatial Commission, 2020), the government of the
United Kingdom specifically acknowledges that it will
prioritize action in areas where there is evidence of
44
This is equivalent to the data value chain model developed by the European Commission (European Data Portal, 2017), presented in section 3.3
(valuation attribution).
45
For instance, the UK is planning to open key parts of the Ordnance Survey’s highly detailed MasterMap, with the remaining data being made
freely available up to a threshold of transactions. This will release an estimated £130 million of economic value each year. (UK’s Geospatial
Commission, 2020)
Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 61
and creativity that enable governments to bridge
the digital divide. It establishes and ensures the
adoption of best practice standards and compliance
mechanisms that enable legal, data, semantic, and
technical interoperability, which are fundamental to
delivering integrated geospatial information.
The People pillar brings in the user aspect. It
recognizes that stakeholders (including the general
community) are integral to the implementation of
integrated geospatial information management
systems, and that their buy-in and commitment is
critical to success. Accordingly, it builds effective
cross-sector and interdisciplinary cooperation, industry
and private sector partnerships, and international
cooperation, in order to develop sustainable SDIs. It
promotes enduring capacity-building programs and
education systems, so that geospatial information
management and entrepreneurship can be sustained in
the longer term.
the greatest opportunity and impact. This is perfectly
logical: geospatial data is expensive to produce, and
many governments face the decision of whether charge
a price for access or distribute such data for free. The
decision will ultimately depend on the chosen business
model and how the benefits of GI are captured by
different actors in the GI ecosystem. Ferro and Osella
(2013), developed a useful framework that models a
public sector information ecosystem that includes profit
and non-profit actors occupying different positions
within a comprehensive value network, as they perform
distinct and specific tasks meant to enrich the value of
raw data released by public bodies44. They also identify
eight archetypes of business models that can easily be
adapted for GI provision:
• Premium: fee payment
• Freemium: basic data for free and high-end data
for a fee45
• Open-source Like: free provision subsidized by other
sources of revenues
SHAPING THE VALUE OF GEOSPATIAL DATA: RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS
THE REAL QUESTION IS NOT WHETHER
GOVERNMENTS SHOULD INVEST IN
GEOSPATIAL INFORMATION, BUT WHEN
AND HOW THEY SHOULD PARTICIPATE.
• Infrastructural Razor and Blades: inexpensive or free
initial offer (“razor”) that encourages continuing future
purchases of follow-up items or services (“blades”)
• Demand-oriented Platforms: premium fee for data
catalogued using metadata, harmonized in terms
of formats, exposed through APIs, and stored in
dedicated servers that make it easier to dynamically
retrieve data in meaningful way
• Supply-oriented Platform: infrastructure is provided by
an intermediary (an existing platform), which also sets
prices according to the rules of a two-sided market46
• Free as Branded Advertising: free data, but
the platform, includes government advertising
encouraging or persuading an audience to use other,
potentially unrelated, government services
• White-label development: same as the previous
category but instead of a government service, a
private sector firm pays a fee in exchange for the
advertising space
Depending on which model is selected, different revenue
streams will be generated and captured by different
stakeholders, including the government. However, and
regardless of which business model is chosen, GASGI
will surely need to recover service delivery costs through
rates charged to users. It willl also need to consider
supplementing these revenues with contributions from
the community and direct government contributions.
46
The intermediary fixes the price according to the degree of positive externality that each side is able to exert on the other. Consequently, this
approach is beneficial for both: from the users/developers’ perspective, their barriers are wiped out (i.e., they can retrieve data without incurring
cost) while, from the governmental angle, the GI intermediary becomes the platform owner, taking advantage of features such as cloud storage,
fast servers, standardization of formats, tagging with metadata and, above all, automated external exposure of data via APIs and GUI.
62 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
If subsidies are granted, they should be transparently
allocated and used, and subject to frequent, effective
accountability mechanisms, including: (i) identification
and analysis of the sources and beneficiaries of the
subsidies; (ii) analysis of the distributive incidence of the
subsidies; and (iii) quantification of the subsidy relative
to macroeconomic indicators in order to report on their
fiscal sustainability (IDB, 2013).
At the end of the day, however, it is necessary for
GASGI to think beyond financial sustainability, given
that GI is also a public good. To this end, GASGI should
promote access to GI by the entire population, including
the most disadvantaged communities and groups, in
both urban and rural areas, and deliver a reliable and
high quality GI that meets minimum standards at the
least possible cost. GASGI should also consider the
role of intellectual property and aim to provide data
under licenses that encourage data sharing and reuse,
such as putting the data in the public domain or using
“Creative Commons” licenses. Efforts should also be
made to provide data in non-proprietary formats, with
suitable documentation and via a variety of different
channels such as government websites and public
cloud providers. Overall, as the world is already squarely
in the age of “big data” and a data-driven economy,
policymakers must pay important attention to the
role of geospatial data in enabling private and public
welfare. However, commercial providers could have a
role to play, especially in innovating on the technology
involved (e.g. analyzing geospatial information) or in
places where private sector markets might work well.
The real question is not whether governments should
invest in geospatial information, but when and how
they should participate.
 SHAPING THE VALUE OF GEOSPATIAL DATA: RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

Next steps
According to the findings of a study carried out
by GASGI47, a number of factors currently limit
the emergence of a highly competitive Geospatial
Ecosystem in KSA. Geospatial investment within KSA
is not always optimized. Government procurement for
geospatial products and services may not always deliver
good value for money, does not always achieve the
desired outcome, and do not adequately recognize the
specialist geospatial expertise and skill levels are often
required, especially for national investment projects
where geospatial services are a major component.
National geospatial products and services are often
disconnected, with a lack of standardization and the
production of multiple versions of similar datasets and
products, resulting in duplication and inefficient use of
KSA resources. Investment into online and accessible
geospatial services is low except for single organization
geospatial portals. Government investment in geospatial that this GI ecosystem does not concentrate power
products and services does not have adequate within the hands of a few large businesses, and stifle the
coordination and quality assurance. Collaboration on innovation, quality, and value for money that that result
and cost sharing of geospatial-related expenditures is from effective competition and disruption.
low, resulting in duplicated efforts and additional cost
Given the potential sizable economic benefits, GASGI
to government. There is a lack of ongoing professional
should continue with its plans to develop the GIT sector
skills development programs to increase and maintain
and to establish a mutually beneficial partnership
Saudi national expertise for geospatial technologies
between government and private sector actors, to
and services. There are limited mechanisms for the
further the prospective investments into the Survey
recognition of certified geospatial professionals
and Geospatial Information sector. The private sector
and businesses within KSA. No clear strategy exists
can deliver the desired benefits of speed, accuracy
to identify the priority areas of investment into
and quality. But it is important to remember that a GI
geospatial research, technologies, and services within
ecosystem that underpins the national development
KSA (GCS, 2018).
agenda will require governments to facilitate
In this context, GASGI has a signficant role to play when competitive environments for the provision of geospatial
determining policy around geospatial information. information. In addition, GASGI not only needs to
Moreover, since technologies change so rapidly, GASGI play the role of providing or facilitating GI, they also
will need to be at the policy-making frontier and stand need to embrace and encourage the use of GI across
ready to deal with issues such as data ownership and the KSA government in a way that is efficient and
control, data privacy and security, accountability and equitable, and that improves infrastructure and service
public data openness, market regulation and even delivery, levels-up communities and lagged regions,
equity and income distribution. GASGI will need to monitors and controls greenhouse emissions, prepares
build the appropriate mechanisms and institutions for next generation technologies such as self-driving/
to support growth and innovation, by working with autonomous vehicles, increases community resilience,
major public and private sector data holders to identify andstrengthens food security.
barriers to sharing data, and by promoting frameworks
that allow safe, fair and equitable data sharing between
organizations. However, it will also need to be vigilant

47
General Commission for Survey (2018)

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 63
6

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7
 ANNEXES

ANNEXES
USE CASE DATABASE
USE CASE COUNTRY SECTOR LINK

GIS BASED RISK ASSESSMENT: A CASE https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/GIS-

BASED-RISK-ASSESSMENT-%3A-A-CASE-STUDY-
STUDY OF ÝZMÝR METROPOLITAN Turkey DRM
OF-%C3%9DZM%C3%9DR-Tarhan-Sayg%C3%BDn/
AREA d70432ad54b21f17fc4b655989b796d14b015a51

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/GIS-BASED-
GIS-BASED URBAN SEISMIC RISK
India DRM URBAN-SEISMIC-RISK-ASSESSMENT-USING-Sinha-
ASSESSMENT USING RISK.IITB Gupta/a9a80f81c8363aa71de0d4e74b8968967c11e187

GIS and local knowledge in disaster

management: a case study of flood risk Vietnam DRM https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18513310/
mapping in Viet Nam
An interactive web-GIS tool for risk
analysis: a case study in the Fella River Italy DRM https://nhess.copernicus.org/articles/16/85/2016/
basin, Italy

Landslide Risk Assessment Based on https://www.researchgate.net/publica-

tion/234059780_Landslide_Risk_Assessment_
GIS Multi-Criteria Evaluation: A Case Iran DRM
Based_on_GIS_Multi-Criteria_Evaluation_A_Case_
Study in Bostan-Abad County, Iran Study_in_Bostan-Abad_County_Iran

Esri mapping, Waze partner to aid https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/

esri-mapping-waze-partner-to-aid-emergency-re-
emergency responders, residents USA DRM
sponders-residents-navigate-amid-hurricane-flor-
navigate amid Hurricane Florence ence/344498

MULTI-HAZARD RISK ASSESSMENT https://www.researchgate.net/publica-

USING GIS IN URBAN AREAS: A CASE tion/228809150_Multi-Hazard_Risk_Assessment_us-
Costa Rica DRM
STUDY FOR THE CITY OF TURRIALBA, ing_GIS_in_urban_areas_A_case_study_for_the_
COSTA RICA city_of_Turrialba_Costa-Rica

US Navy Uses GIS to Minimize Its https://www.esriuk.com/~/media/Files/Pdfs/library/

USA Public Safety
Impact on Local Communities fliers/pdfs/us-navy-uses-gis.PDF

Law Enforcement & Geospatial https://www.esri.com/library/whitepapers/pdfs/gis-

USA Public Safety
Technology for-law-enforcement.pdf

Vancouver Police Drive Down Crime https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/vancouver-police-

British
with Machine Learning and Spatial Public Safety drive-down-crime-machine-learning-spatial-ryan-
Columbia prox/
Analytics

Philadelphia Police Collaborate to

https://www.esri.com/about/newsroom/blog/phila-
Address Crime that Arrests Alone USA Public Safety
delphia-police-collaborate-crime/
Won’t Solve

https://www.esri.com/about/newsroom/blog/toronto-
Toronto Police Use Maps and Apps to
Canada Public Safety police-use-maps-and-apps-to-strengthen-communi-
Strengthen Community-Based Policing ty-based-policing/

https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis/products/field-op-
EPA Integrates Emergency Response USA Health erations/overview/epa-integrates-emergency-re-
sponse

https://www.esri.com/about/newsroom/arcnews/
Weathering Hurricane Florence USA DRM
weathering-hurricane-florence/

The role of remote sensing and GIS in https://www.researchgate.net/publica-

tion/209805627_The_role_of_remote_sensing_and_
risk mapping and damage assessment Netherlands DRM
GIS_in_risk_mapping_and_damage_assessment_
for disasters in urban areas for_disasters_in_urban_areas

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 73
ANNEXES

USE CASE COUNTRY SECTOR LINK

Utility’s Location-Based Damage https://www.esri.com/about/newsroom/arc-

Assessment Kick-Starts a Digital USA DRM news/utilitys-location-based-damage-assess-
Transformation ment-kick-starts-a-digital-transformation/

THE APPLICATION OF GIS TO THE https://www.academia.edu/5573212/Application_of_

Thailand Education
SCHOOL MAPPING IN BANGKOK GIS_to_the_School_Mapping_in_Bangkok

Boston Saved US$5 Million by Routing Transportation/ https://www.route-fifty.com/tech-data/2019/08/bos-

USA
School Buses with an Algorithm Edu ton-school-bus-routes/159113/

HOME TO SCHOOL/COLLEGE Transportation/ https://en.powys.gov.uk/article/7223/Home-to-

Wales
TRANSPORT POLICY Edu School-and-College-Transport-Policy

https://iiste.org/Journals/index.php/CEIS/article/
Campus GIS and Mapping USA Education
download/22191/22614

UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING CAMPUS https://www.uwyo.edu/wygisc/our_research/uw-op-

USA Education
ENTERPRISE GIS (EGIS) erations-gis/index.html

https://geospatial.blogs.com/geospatial/2017/10/geo-
Geocoordinated BIM modeling benefits
Cambodia Infrastructure coordinated-bim-modeling-benefits-build-and-oper-
build and operate projects ate-projects.html

Power utility identifies 60-70 percent https://geospatial.blogs.com/geospatial/2019/03/

productivity improvement by power-utility-realizes-60-70-productivity-improve-
USA Energy
integrating engineering design, GIS and ment-by-integrating-engineering-design-gis-and-en-
enterprise systems terprise-systems.html

https://wginc.com/subsurface-utility-engineer-
Sub-surface Utility engineering USA Infrastructure
ing-a-proven-solution/

Cost Savings On Highway Projects https://etda.libraries.psu.edu/files/final_submis-

USA Infrastructure
Utilizing Subsurface Utility Engineering sions/6837

https://www.geospatialworld.net/blogs/improv-
Improving quality of geolocation of
USA Infrastructure ing-quality-of-geolocation-of-underground-utili-
underground utilities at Heathrow ties-at-heathrow/

https://pressbooks.senecacollege.ca/operationsman-
Strategic Capacity Planning USA Infrastructure
agement/chapter/strategic-capacity-planning/

http://journals.euser.org/files/articles/ejms_jan_
Monitoring Performance USA Education
apr_16_nr2/Lon.pdf

https://www.researchgate.net/publica-
tion/293334194_A_Model_for_the_Use_of_GIS_
School Admissions Sri-lanka Education
Technology_in_College_and_University_Admis-
sions_Planning

https://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/~gisteac/gis_book_
Transport U.K Transportation
abridged/files/ch59.pdf

https://www.cdc.gov/policy/hst/hi5/saferoutes/index.
Safe Routes to School USA Education
html

Exploring urban tourism crowding in

https://www.cabi.org/leisuretourism/ab-
Shanghai via crowdsourcing geospatial China Tourism
stract/20173267783
data.
Crowding externalities from tourist use
Netherlands Tourism https://papers.tinbergen.nl/13146.pdf
of urban space.

https://www.geospatialworld.net/article/manag-
Managing traffic congestion with GIS India Transportation
ing-traffic-congestion-with-gis/

74 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
 ANNEXES

DRM USE CASE: EARLY WARNING SYSTEMS

The most frequent source of disasters in • Makkah area, during Hajj, January 2005. A heavy
KSA is flash flooding triggered by torrential rainstorm that was described as the worst in 20
rainfall. Figure 4 shows the location of years killed 29 people and injured 17; vehicles were
populations exposed to flood hazards. High hazards swept away; and roads, bridges, electricity, and
appear in the southwest. The eastern, leeward side of communications were damaged.
the Asir Mountains is mainly categorized as a moderate
• Jeddah City, 2009. The storm dumped approximately
to high flood hazard zone. The western, central, and
90 mm of rain in only 4 hours and doubled the
northeastern areas of the country are also exposed to
average annual rainfall in Jeddah. These floods were
moderate flood hazards. Large cities, including Riyadh,
described by Civil Defense officials as the worst in
Jeddah, and Makkah are all exposed to medium to high
27 years, with 122 people killed and more than 360
flood hazards. Due to the concentration of population
missing. At least 3,000 vehicles were swept away
and economic assets, combined with hastily built
or damaged.
utilities infrastructure, these metropolitan areas have
the highest risks in the kingdom. • Riyadh City, 2010. A brief 45-minute torrential rainfall
resulted in floods and car crashes across the city.
There have been at least seven damaging floods in KSA
since 1975, which are listed below: • Jeddah City and Makkah Region, 2011. Heavy floods
affected the whole region.
• Wadi Khulais and Fatimah in the western region,
1975. A flood caused extensive damage to the Jeddah • Riyadh City, 2013. A storm system moving southward
water-supply network, and 67 people were killed. over Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait gave rise
to a torrential rainfall resulting in four deaths and 10
• Southwestern region of wadi Itwad, February 13,
missing people in Riyadh City.
1982. Floods resulted in loss of life as well as damage
to bridges, roads, and embankments; severe damage
to the newly constructed road from Taif to Jazan; and
the collapse of several retention structures.

FIGURE 4: FLOOD HAZARD AREAS AND MAJOR POPULATION CENTERS

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 75
ANNEXES

Given the heavy losses and damages caused by flash
floods and following Youssef et al. (2016b), who
conclude that a large number of these damages could
have been avoided by having an effective Early Flood
Warning System (EWS), this analysis estimates the cost
of damages from a potential 25-year flood that could
be avoided if such a system (heavily enabled by GITs)
were to be established. Three challenges needed to be
addressed in order to carry out the analysis.
The first challenge was to estimate the future
occurrences of flood events and damages. In lieu of
official damage estimates, which do not exist in KSA,
the authors relied on the World Resources Institute
(WRI) Aqueduct Global Flood Analyzer48 to estimate
annual flood damages in KSA. This tool combines
hydrological and hydraulic data with socioeconomic
data and projections to estimate flood impacts and
urban damage at the country level49. It also projects
future flood risk based on three future climate and
socio-economic scenarios. According to this model,
the 2009 Jeddah flood (in estimates by Youssef et al.
(2016a) first introduced in the Flood Early Warning
System Use Case described in Section 4.1 of this report)
generated approximately as much damage as a 25-year
flood. Thus, a 4 percent annual risk to occurrence for
this type of flood is applied which equates to expected
urban damage of US$ 120 million in any given year (i.e.
US$ 3 billion times 4 percent annual risk). This figure is
used as an upper bound (high scenario). The US$ 2.2
billion damage found by Momani and Fadil (2010), also
introduced in Section 4.1, is used as the medium scenario
– an urban damage of US$ 88 million per year (i.e. US$
2.2 billion times 4 percent annual risk).
For a lower bound (low scenario), we use the estimate
from the EM-DAT database introduced in Section 4.1
of the report. We use the same 4 percent annual risk
rate from the WRI model but apply it to the US$ 900
million damage estimate from EM-DAT, giving us a
lower bound estimate of annual flood damage risk of
US$ 36 million. It should be highlighted that these are
estimates of a single flood in a single city, and therefore
a significant underestimation of the national annual
damages from floods.
The second challenge is to account for climate change
and economic growth. Annual flood damage risk will not
remain constant over the next 15 years. As population
and the size of the economy grow, more people and
assets become exposed to risk. In addition, climate
change is expected to increase the frequency and
ferocity of such storms. Thus, the authors needed to
adjust expected annual damages by these two factors.
For the first, the authors used the IMF estimated GDP
growth rate for KSA of 2.36 percent50. For climate
change impacts, they relied on the WRI model discussed
above. According to this model, climate change is
expected to increase damages by approximately 7.2
percent per year between 2010-2030.51
The third challenge is estimating to what degree
damage could be reduced with an Early Flood Warning
System (enabled by GIT) in KSA. For this, the authors
used a model developed by the Flood Hazard Research
Centre (FHRC) at the United Kingdom’s Middlesex
University(Carsell et al., 2004). The FHRC reviewed the

48
WRI’s Aqueduct™. https://floods.wri.org – Accessed on November 2019
49
The Aqueduct Flood Analyzer makes use of a series of models to estimate the impacts of river floods at a variety of geographic scales, including
country, states, and major river basin, including the global hydrological model PCR-GLOBWB and its extension DynRout, inundation modelling,
impact modelling, future flood risk projections, etc. Details about methodology can be found on https://floods.wri.org/#/
50
For the real GDP growth rate, we use climate change-adjusted estimated GDP growth rates. The IMF has projected GDP growth rates through
2024. Using its 5-years projection data from 2020 to 2024, we calculate that both the simple average rate and the compound rate are 2.36 percent.
51
This model assumes a Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) of 8.5 and Shared socio-economic pathway (SSP) of 2. RCP 8.5 assumes
severe climate change whereas SSP2 assumes continued current socio-economic development trends.

76 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
 ANNEXES

past flood responses and researched the performance FIGURE 5. DAY CURVE (CARSELL ET AL., 2004).
of flood warning system in the United Kingdom. They
suggested that the avoided actual flood damage, Da,
can be estimated as:

Da = Dp × R × Pa × Pr × Pe

• Dp: the maximum potential flood damage avoided

with a fully effective system;

• R: the reliability of the flood warning system;

• Pa: the proportion of residents available to respond to

a flood warning;

• Pr: the proportion of households which will respond

to a flood warning or have others who will do so
for them;
• Pe: the proportion of households which respond
effectively.
Each of these factors takes a value between 0.0 and 1.0,
representing the efficiency of the system components.
The FHRC also identified recommend values for these
factors. The recommended value for parameter Pa
is 0.55 if warnings are limited to “loudhailer” or siren
warnings, 0.65 in situations where “flood wardens” are
used along with other warning methods, 0.80 with
warning lead times between six and eight hours. The
recommended value for Pr is 0.75 without help from
friends or family and 0.80 with help from friends or
family. The value of Pe ranges between 0.70 and 0.95.
R ranges between 0.0 and 1.0 based on the reliability
of the flood warning system. Dp can be calculated
using Day’s method (Day, 1970). Day proposed the Day
curve (Figure 5) to estimate the tangible benefit of a
flood warning system as a function of the warning time.
According to the Day curve, the maximum possible
reduction in damage is about 35 percent of the total
flood damage, independent of the warning time.
Suppose R takes the values from 0.5 to 0.9, the range of
Da is 5 to 19 percent.
Assuming the system’s reliability is 0.9. Pa, Pr and Pe are
0.65, 0.8 and 0.95, respectively. Then the avoided actual
flood damage is:
Da = 0.35 × 0.9 × 0.65 × 0.8 × 0.95 = 15.6%
The model concludes that a typical, effective system
could reduce damages by 15.6 percent (average
scenario), with confident bounds of 5-19 percent (low
and high scenarios). For example, in the 2009 Jeddah
flood, US$ 140.4 million damage could have been
avoided if an effective flood warning system had been in
place at that time.
EDUCATION USE CASE: SCHOOLS
SITING AND MANAGEMENT
This section describes the analysis
conducted to determine the economic
benefits from improved siting and
management of schools. This use case was identified
directly by the MoE. Currently, the MoE does not receive
information on where students and teachers live. This
makes planning education policy difficult, as it is not
possible to optimize the boundaries of school districts
or the construction of new schools.

Under the SDI that GASGI is planning, it is expected

that the MoE will receive information on the location
of teacher and student homes (which is collected and
maintained by the Saudi Post), and will also maintain

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 77
ANNEXES

a spatially referenced database on school locations. According to data from the MoE, there are 9,011 low
With this information, the MoE expects to be able to enrollment schools in KSA, defined as schools with
consolidate schools which are currently under-enrolled, fewer than 100 students enrolled. Because the minimum
improve the distribution of students and teachers across capacity for a school in KSA is 225 students, these
schools, and reduce operating costs. Under the planned schools are at best half enrolled. They are distributed
NSDI, the MoE should gain access to the information and throughout the country, but clustered in high-population
systems which will make this possible. This information regions such as Riyadh, which contains 24 percent of
should generate several benefits: low enrollment schools, and Makkah (a region that
includes the cities of Jeddah and Mecca), which contains
• Maximization of the use of MOE assets through a 16 percent of low enrollment schools (Table 12).
reduction in the number of schools in operation and
the number of buses needed to transport students. TABLE 12: NUMBER OF SCHOOLS WITH LOW
• Reduced commuting time for students and teachers ENROLLMENT NUMBERS (<100 STUDENTS) IN 2018
alike, as they will be matched to schools which will,
on average, be closer to their homes. This will result REGION NUMBER OF SCHOOLS
in cost and time savings for students and teachers,
as their travel costs decline with their commute time. RIYADH REGION 2,234
Studies have indicated that when students have
shorter commutes, they perform better in school MAKKAH REGION 1,440
(Dickerson and McIntosh 2013; Contreras et al. 2018).
These benefits also cascade to other people and AL-MADINAH REGION 552
sectors through reduced road congestion during peak
commuting times. AL-QASSIM REGION 795
• Improved siting of future schools. With location- EASTERN PROVINCE 671
based data, the location of new schools can be
optimized. In addition to reducing commuting time ‘ASIR REGION 1,264
for students and teachers to new schools, it can also
alleviate the need for new school construction, saving AL-JAWF REGION 142
both capital construction costs, as well as future
ongoing maintenance. AL-BAHAH REGION 447
Data and methodological constraints prevented the
estimation of the second and third set of benefits.
HA’IL REGION 498
Therefore, this analysis focused on the benefits from
the first item: cost savings from operating a reduced
TABUK REGION 271
number of schools and a smaller bus fleet. Where
NORTHERN BORDERS
assumptions are made, they are conservative to prevent
REGION
121
inflation of benefits. Thus, these numbers represent
a strict lower bound of the economic benefits of this JIZAN REGION 412
particular GI use case for the education sector.
NAJRAN REGION 164
TOTAL 9,011
Source: Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Ministry of Education

78 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
 ANNEXES

Without data on school locations, as well as the
locations of students and teachers (which is the precise
information needed to enable this use case), it is not
possible to calculate the number of schools that could
be consolidated. Instead, assumptions are made for
two scenarios: low benefits and high benefits. Despite
their names, both of these scenarios are considered
conservative. In the low benefits scenario, it is assumed
that 10 percent of low enrollment schools, or 901
schools, could be consolidated due to this use case.
Based on information from the MoE, the average
annual cost of operating and maintaining a school is
US$ 35,200. This annual cost breaks down as follow:
Maintenance Costs - US$ 9,600, Cleaning Costs - US$
19,200, and Air Conditioning Costs - US$ 6,400.
It is also assumed that these school closings would
reduce the number of buses that are needed to
transport students by 2 buses per school. In the high
scenario, it is assumed that 25 percent of low enrollment
schools could be closed, and the closings would reduce
the number of buses needed by 4 per school. Data
on the capital, operational, and maintenance costs of
buses was obtained from the MoE. In total, the cost of
purchasing, operating, and maintaining a bus is US$
17,781. Annual cost per bus breaks down as follows:
Capital cost - US$ 5,33352, Maintenance/Service Cost
- US$ 3,05953, Driver Cost - US$ 6,00054, Fixed Costs -
US$ 3,01355, and Fuel Costs - US$ 375.90.
Table 13 shows the annual cost savings due to a reduced
number of schools and buses under the low and high
scenarios. Under the low scenario, annual cost savings
amount to US$ 63.8 million, and under the high scenario
they amount to US$ 239.4 million. Alternatively, for the
15-year time frame, which is the preferred time frame
in this study, total gross benefits range from US$ 563
million under the low scenario to US$ 2.113 billion under
the high scenario.

TABLE 13: ANNUAL COST SAVINGS FROM SCHOOL CONSOLIDATION

DUE TO A REDUCED NUMBER OF SCHOOLS AND BUSES

LOW SCENARIO HIGH SCENARIO

SCHOOLS CLOSED 901 2,252

TOTAL ANNUAL O&M COST PER SCHOOL (US$) $35,200 $35,200

ANNUAL SCHOOL OPERATION SAVINGS (millions of US$) $31.7 $79.3

BUSES ELIMINATED 1,802 9,008

TOTAL ANNUAL O&M COST PER BUS $17,781 $17,781

ANNUAL BUS COST SAVINGS (millions of US$) $32.0 $160.2

TOTAL ANNUAL COST SAVINGS (millions of US$) $63.8 $239.4

TOTAL GROSS BENEFITS 15-YEAR TIME FRAME (millions of US$) $563 $2.113

Source: Authors’ calculations

52
Based on the average bus cost of $26,667, depreciated over a period of 5 years
53
Includes annual services (oil change, bus cleaning, etc.), maintenance costs, and cost of tires.
54
The average salary of a bus driver
55
Includes the cost of vehicle insurance, registration, warehousing, administrative staff salaries, communications and technical services, and
cleaning tools/spare parts.

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 79
ANNEXES

ENERGY USE CASE: SMART GRIDS

What is a smart grid? In short: “Grid” grid by collecting data, managing smart meter and
refers to the electricity grid, a network of sensor installation, analyzing data, monitoring demands
transmission lines, substations, transformers and outages, and incorporating renewable energy56.
and more that deliver electricity from
To estimate the impact of GITs on smart grids the
the power plant to homes or businesses. The digital
authors used a paper from Alaqeel & Suryanarayanan
technology that allows for two-way communication
(2019), where they presented a detailed cost-benefit
between the utility and its customers and the sensing
analysis of the insertion of smart grid technologies
along the transmission lines is what makes the grid
into KSA electricity infrastructure modernization. They
“smart”. Smart grids integrate various technologies like
estimate 14 different benefits (see Table 14) from the
automated control, high power converters, sensing, and
adoption of smart grid technologies in four types of
smart metering, along with modern communication
operations: Advanced Transmission Operations (ATO),
tools that allow for energy management techniques
Advanced Distribution Operations (ADO), Advanced
including optimization of demand, energy supply, and
Metering Infrastructure (AMI), and Advanced Asset
network availability (see Figure 6). GIT is the foundation
Management (AAM).
of all of these, enabling utilities to implement a smart

FIGURE 6: A DEPICTION OF THE COMPONENTS OF A SMART GRID

Source: KFW: Renewable Energy (2017)

56
GIS for Smart Grid. https://www.esri.com/~/media/Files/Pdfs/library/brochures/pdfs/gis-for-smart-grid.pdf

80 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
 ANNEXES

This cost-benefit analysis was done using the • The inclusion of Smart Grid Technologies (SGTs) in
discounted cash flow model and using the following the transmission and distribution (T&D) networks
input data and assumptions57: is expected to reduce operations cost by 8 percent.
Moreover, it is estimated that US$ 400 million can be
• The annual growth rates in transmission and saved in T&D networks for each one GW saved from
distribution networks are 7.6 percent and 6.3 percent, new generation capacity.
respectively. Average technical losses in the grid
networks are 7 percent. Consumptions and their • SGTs are expected to reduce system losses by
growth rates. 10 percent, by improving the System Average
Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) by 10 percent.
Amount (TWh) Growth Rate Ultimately, energy consumption is estimated to
RESIDENTIAL 114.5 6.30% decrease by 0.7 percent. In addition to SAIDI
INDUSTRIAL 51.8 3.70% improvement, System Average Interruption Frequency
GOVERNMENTAL 39.6 9.20% Index (SAIFI) is expected to improve by 50 percent in
three years.
COMMERCIAL 47.2 11.80%
OTHER 11.4 1% • An equal (linear) progression of technology maturity,
yielding a 33.3 percent of total benefit each year.
• Peak demand in 2016 was 60.8 GW.
• Demand response programs are expected to be
Share Growth Rate
enabled after the introduction of SGTs. It is assumed
RESIDENTIAL 57.40% 5% that a 5 percent reduction in the new generation
INDUSTRIAL 17% 8% capacity will be realized after peak shaving programs.
GOVERNMENTAL 12.70% 3% Savings in new installed capacity are estimated to be
COMMERCIAL 10.60% 7% US$ 1.06 billion for each GW saved.
OTHER 2% 3% • In addition to new capacity savings, demand response
programs will generate savings in Operations and
• As part of the Saudi Vision 2030, KSA aims to
Maintenance (O&M) such that a reduction of US$ 4.5
generate 9.5 GW from renewable resources with an
will be realized for each one MWh saved.
annual installment plan of 0.7, 1.2, 1.7, 1.8, 2.1, and 2.1
GW across each of the next 6 years. • The average cost of meter reading per meter per year
is assumed to equal US$ 0.80. The total number of
• After 6 years, renewable energy (RE) penetration of
meter reading employees required in Saudi Arabia
1.6 GW per year is assumed (the average values of RE
is 3,200 and the average labor cost is US$ 1,333
penetration of the six years).
per month. Average productivity is assumed to be
• The levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) used for costs 85 meters per day. The current total annual number
calculation is estimated to be US$ 39 /MWh for fossil of manual meter connections and/or disconnections
fuel resource (with an 8 percent increase yearly due to is 350,000. The number of manual connections and/
oil prices), and US$ 110 /MWh for RE sources (with a 7 or disconnections that can be solved by a full-time
percent decrease yearly). equivalent (FTE) is 10 per day.

• Utilization factor for power plant is assumed to be 85
percent. And the amount of fuel needed to produce
one MWh of energy is estimated to be 7.94 MBTU
(one thousand the British thermal unit).
• A conservative assumption for oil prices is US$ 50 per
barrel for the next 15 years.
• The expected improvement in the reduction of
non-technical losses is 40 percent after SGTs are
introduced. Increasing billing accuracy is expected to
yield US$ 21 million each year. Avoided replacement
of traditional meters is expected to generate US$ 32
million savings.

57
Data was obtained from KSA’s Annual Statistical Booklet, 2016

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 81
ANNEXES

Table 14 shows the present value of the 14 financial
benefits. In consultation with energy sector experts,
the World Bank team analyzed whether each of
the 14 benefits was enabled by the use of GITs. The
team identified that only seven of the 14 benefits are
depended on GITs58. Thus, the benefits accrued from
GIT when developing a smart grid infrastructure for
KSA, are estimated to be US$ 4.985 billion over the
next 15 years which is equivalent to US$ 585 million
per year.
Lastly, it is good to note that the Alaqeel &
Suryanarayanan (2019) did not performed a scenario
analysis nor did they publish a model that would
have enabled one. Nevertheless, they did carry out a
sensitivity analysis where they examined the impact of
a 10 percent change in values of some key parameters
to the SGTs total benefits. As a result, the authors
show that the discount rate, followed by the annual
installation of renewable energy sources and oil prices,
are the most sensitive parameters.

TABLE 14: PRESENT VALUE OF EXPECTED BENEFITS FROM SMART GRID TECHNOLOGIES (IN BILLIONS OF US$)59

PRESENT GIT
BENEFIT DESCRIPTION
VALUE ENABLED

Reducing transmission and distribution operation costs. This outcome is

realized by replacing manual network resources required to operate and 1.84 Yes
maintain the grid system with automation solutions.

Improving the quality of service and minimizing technical losses. 1.1 Yes
Increasing the continuity of service since smart grid can reduce the
frequency and duration of outages.
0.06 Yes

Reducing meter-reading costs. For instance, smart meters can transmit

back readings automatically.
0.45 Yes

Reducing reading management cost and optimizing resources used in the

reading management.
0.001 No

Reducing the restoration time associated with system faults and failures. 0.005 Yes
Reducing non-technical losses including theft and the non-invoiced
energy delivered to end-users.
1.41 Yes

Improving metering and billing accuracy. 0.12 Yes

Savings on the avoided replacement of traditional meters due to damage
or shorter life duration.
0.18 No

Increasing renewable energy sources capacity. 2.06 No

Increasing fuel availability. 5.21 No
Reducing GHG emissions. 1.08 No
Reducing generation costs. 1.7 No
Reducing transmission and distribution capital costs. 0.62 No
Source: Alaqeel & Suryanarayanan (2019)

58
The team identified the set of smart grid technologies that are enabled by GIT with the support of a Lead Energy Specialist, Pedro Antmann,
from the World Bank Group.
59
A discount rate of 7.5 percent and a time horizon of 15 years was assumed

82 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia

COMMERCE USE CASE:
SMART PORTS
In the ports and maritime industry,
smart ports strategies are becoming
increasingly important for countries
participating in global trade. Even though the
denomination of “smart port” has not been defined
or agreed upon so far by the relevant international
community, for the purpose of this report, the authors
adopted this holistic and comprehensive definition:
smart ports are those capable of crowding better-
Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 83
ANNEXES
educated individuals, skilled workforces, intelligent
infrastructures, and automation to facilitate knowledge
development and sharing, optimize operations,
enhance resiliency, lead sustainable development,
and guarantee safe and secure activities (Molavi et
al 2019). In more simple and practical terms, a smart
port will improve performance under four main activity
domains: operations, environment, energy, and safety
and security. One can assess the performance of a port
in those domains by studying measurable elements of
a smart port, called “sub-domains” and presented in
the table below.
ANNEXES

TABLE 15: CLASSIFICATION OF SMART PORT ACTIVITY DOMAINS AND SUB-DOMAINS65

DOMAINS Sub-domains Description

The extent to which port operations are carried out efficiently

Productivity
within the limits of time, budget, space, and available facilities

Automation is the use of various control systems (set of devices

Automation that manages the behavior of other devices or systems) for
OPERATIONS
operating equipment with minimal or reduced human intervention

Intelligent infrastructure means the use of technologies,

Intelligent
infrastructure
both hardware and software, in the port to increase efficiency
and sustainability

Environmental management systems (EMS) are a means to help

Environmental organizations improve their environmental performance. This aim
management systems is achieved through observing and controlling port operations
with regard to their environmental impacts

Port activities and the shipping industry can cause three major
Emissions and
pollutions control
types of pollution: emissions into the air, noise pollution, and
ENVIRONMENT water pollution

Ports receive a noticeable amount of waste, sources of which are

Waste management
port activities and vessels

Water is a vital resource for both human and other species health,
Water management so monitoring and controlling the water quality should be part of
a port’s plans and strategies

Several factors influence the energy consumption of a port.

Efficient energy These elements could be divided into two categories, direct and
consumption indirect energy users. For both groups, saving possibilities should
be identified

Renewable energy is replenishable energy that is generated from

ENERGY natural processes. There are significant possibilities for renewable
Producing and use
of renewables
energy implementation in the ports. This assists in partially or
totally covering the port’s energy demand and significantly
reduces pollution.

Ports should identify energy management strategies and

Energy management
activities to make efficient use of the available energy

Safety Management System (SMS) is a comprehensive business

Safety management
systems
management system designed to administer safety principles in
the workplace

A security management system identifies potential threats to

SAFETY AND Security management the port and establishes, implements, monitors, reviews, and
SECURITY systems maintains all appropriate actions to provide assurance for the
effective handling of security risks

Establishing an integrated monitoring and optimization system

Integrated monitoring and
optimization systems
based on the most recent software and hardware facilitates
achieving enhanced security and safety in the port area

84 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
 ANNEXES

It is worth mentioning that smart solutions in the port

sector are not one-size-fits-all recommendations.
Tailored investments in GIT should be identified
and designed in accordance with the specific port
circumstances and the challenges it may be facing,.
Moreover, to be successful and deliver expected
benefits, any digital or automated process requires a
well-defined operational and management concept. The
successful implementation of GITs in the maritime and
port sector will depend on the adherence of the entire
stakeholder community to such an approach.

In discussions with international and local experts in

the context of smarting, digitalizing, and expanding
automation of ports, it became clear that some port
operations in KSA are already supported by GIT in some
capacity, as most container terminal operators in KSA
are well established and world-renowned actors in the
industry. However, gaps still remain between ports in
KSA and the latest generation of modern ports. This
section presents some of the key aspects of novel GIT
functionalities in the Jeddah port based on experiences
observed in other contexts and with the objective of
improving the efficiency of essential operative cycles,
optimizing infrastructure planning and development, As a first step, a set of key performance indicators (KPI)
and maintenance of existing facilities. It is expected must be selected to measure the current performance,
that in the long-term these improvements will impact identifying potential needs of improvement such as
positively on the competitiveness of the foreign trade the number of moves per vessels at berth, as well as
of KSA as well as on the domestic commercialization of all further relevant operative cycles of the container
of imports. terminal, particularly at the different modal interfaces
(gates, stacks, storage, customs inspection, etc.). The
following KPIs and operative areas were selected
to quantify improvements or identify issues in the
operative cycles concerned, but also to compare them
with regional and international benchmarks in the fields
of port performance:

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 85
ANNEXES
TABLE 16: KEY INDICATORS OF PORT PERFORMANCE
AREA Approach/Rationale
Number of The degree of utilization and the
containers throughput of containers per line
handled over meter berthing quay is an important
the quay side determinant of the need for further
per year extensions
Productivity Cargo handling equipment, namely
of quay side the ship to shore gantry cranes.
equipment Increasing the productivity per engine
(ship tO shore would defer the need for additional
gantry cranes) equipment proportionally
(per year)
Performance It has been assumed that the total
of berthing operating hours of all vessels calling
facilities at the terminals could be reduced
(per hour) by increasing the cargo handling
performance and consequently a
shipping line can take advantage of
the gained time to either proceed with
slower speed to the next port of call
or include the savings in the voyage
calculations for further commercial
reasons
Dwell time This element is often underestimated
of containers despite the fact that the containers
in the port are the crucial element in the
containerized maritime transportation,
and lead to important operating costs
with direct impact on the freight
revenues. The dwell time of discharged
containers within the port premises is
an important aspect for all parties, the
merchant, and the shipping line but
also for the port operator.
The mere average dwell time in
Jeddah Port has been indicated with
10 days (import). While this period
of time is of relevance, the total
turnaround time of a container until its
return for shipment (full or empty) has
a direct impact on the capacity of the
entire fleet and the number of round-
voyages per container achievable.
These aspects have further impact
on the required land transportation
capacity, etc.
86 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
Impact on Port Impact on Supply Chain
Costs of infrastructure to satisfy It is expected that any
the throughput of containers per capital expenditure
constructed berth. Exhausting impacts potentially
the berthing capacity at any time on the tariff of the
prevents from expending on services provided
additional infrastructure
The annual handling capacity of It is expected that any
the ship to shore gantry cranes capital expenditure
optimize the operative performance, impacts potentially
and at the same time prevent from on the tariff of the
additional investments which alike services provided
infrastructure financing, would
impact on the service costs
The faster discharging and loading The higher the hourly
operations are completed, the performance, the
earlier a ship can leave the berth/ shorter is the time
terminal. The accumulated time spent at berth by a
saved throughout a year can vessel.
reach important dimensions and
allow the shipping line to either
call at additional ports or reduce
the cruising speed. Overall, the
quantified vessel’s cost has an
impact on the cost of maritime
transportation.
Inventory costs for stocks of goods is Positive impact on the
a common criterion in the context of cost of trade and on
assessing upon efficiency of supply the quality (velocity)
chains. So far, the stock of containers of the supply chain.
deployed by a shipping line is an Faster transportation
important cost factor. Keeping the and inventory
turnaround time minimized, would turnaround
allow additional round voyages for
the containers.
 ANNEXES

The next step was to estimate the installed container correlated to the estimated throughput of containers
handling capacity in terms of equipment (ship to shore and forecasted until the year 2035. This is the as-is
gantry cranes) and the available berthing capacity of or baseline scenario and the following parameters,
the container terminals. The port capacity was then assumptions and indicators were used.

TABLE 17: INSTALLED CONTAINER HANDLING CAPACITY AT PORT

ITEM DATA REMARK/SOURCE

NUMBER OF BERTHS 19 Website

LENGTH OF BERTHING LINE 4.325 meters Provided

6,900,000
NOTIONAL CONTAINER CAPACITY Twenty-foot equivalent Provided
unit (TEU)

AVAILABLE SHIP TO SHORE

GANTRY CRANE (SSG)
26 units Provided

AVERAGE SSG PER VESSEL 3 Provided

AVERAGE AVAILABILITY OF SSG 84% Provided

AVERAGE MOVES/YEAR/SSG 90,000 Provided

AVERAGE MOVES/HOUR PER SSG 28 moves Provided

RE-STOW MOVES OF CONTAINER 5% Industry standard

TEU/MOVE 1.65 Provided and calculated

AVERAGE MOVES/YEAR/ Provided (could not be

METER BERTH
1,500
corroborated)

CONTAINER DWELL TIME (IMPORT) 10 days provided

AVAILABLE GROUND SLOTS 23,220 TEU estimated

MANEUVERING TIME OF VESSEL 3 hours/call Calculators approach

SHIP’ DAILY COST US$ 40,000/day Market/broker research

CONTAINER DAILY COST (FPP) US$ 7.00/day Market enquiry

Consultant research for

CONSTRUCTION OF QUAY WALL US$ 95,000/meter
18 meters depth

SHIP TO SHORE Enquiry for FOB purchase

GANTRY CRANE (SSG)
US$ 12,000,000
Super Post Panamax

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 87
ANNEXES
The data and information used are based on the
following sources:
• Desk research of international industry literature.
• Questionnaire submitted to the Jeddah Port authority.
• Internet research of KSA specific sources (https://
mawani.gov.sa/en-us/ as Riyadh based port
administration and https://mawani.gov.sa/en-us/
SAPorts/jeddah/ as Jeddah Islamic Port specific
sites)
• Historic data (2014 – 2018) served to calculate the
notional key performance indicators, especially for the
areas (operative cycles) mentioned before.
• The performance indicators provided by Jeddah Port
authority have been used as average references, since
not all terminals provided such information.
• The traffic forecast provided by the Jeddah Port
authority for the period of time until 2035, represents
the total volume of containers handled in the Port of
Jeddah, regardless of the specific terminal.
• Identified current indicators have been applied for the
period of time through 2035.
• Due to missing information, the main focus of this
analysis lies on the most visible and relevant areas of
the port, leaving aside the yard management of all
terminals and all horizontal transports within the port
premises up to delivery and receipt of containers.
This approach appears reasonable given the result
of a rough estimation of the stacking capacity of
the three terminals, which is not expected to cause
any bottlenecks for the period of time under review
(present through 2035).
88 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
Next, the current KPIs were compared to other
specialized container ports belonging to the same
category as Jeddah, and where achieved results are
supported by GIT elements66. The estimation of results
for the period under review was completed with
current KPIs. The current KPIs were then replaced with
international KPIs observed in similar medium- and
high-performing international container terminals,
as outlined in the specialized literature, including the
World Bank’s Port Reform Toolkit67, and whose smart
ports capabilities are more developed and integrated
than those of Jeddah. Such an exercise is known
as “benchmarking” and occurs when a business or
production process compares its results to other third
party KPIs (benchmarks) to gauge the effectiveness of
existing practices. The analysis of the achieved results
can in some cases support continuation of the current
operation, or in others present disadvantageous results
that lead to the identification of necessary actions or
investments required to improve performance. Table
18 below summarizes the performance indicators
identified for the container terminals of the Jeddah port,
as an average of all three terminals, and those based
on international industry standards for specialized
container terminals of equivalent size and throughput of
containers (similar category of container terminals).
The parameters shown in the table have been used for
the respective benchmarking process, which means
that the current ones (KPIs) were replaced by the
medium and high performing scenarios of comparable
container ports.

TABLE 18: PERFORMANCE INDICATORS FOR CONTAINER TERMINALS
PORT OPERATIONS PERFORMANCE CURRENT
AVERAGE PERFORMANCE SSG PER YEAR 90,000 TEU
MOVES PER SSG HR 28
TEU/MOVE 1.65
MOVES/METER QUAY 875 – 1,250
DWELL TIME IMPORT (DAYS) 10
AVAILABLE LENGTH OF BERTH (M) 4,325
As a result, three potential economic benefits
are expected:
• Cost savings from more efficient ship to shore gantry
(SSG) cranes: As GIT can improve the productivity
per SSG68, the port of Jeddah could keep using
their current installed capacity and defer future
investments in additional SSGs.
• Costs savings from vessels’ shorter port stays: As GIT
can improve the Berth Hour Performance (BHP)69, or
ship productivity, vessels stays in the Port of Jeddah
can be shortened and costs saved.
• Cost savings from improved container management:
As GIT can reduce the dwell time of discharged
containers within the port premises, operating costs
can be reduced through cuts to the total turnaround
time of a container until its return for shipment (full
or empty.
Cost savings from more efficient
ship to shore gantry crane operations:
Currently the port of Jeddah’s SSG productivity per
year is between 75,000 and 95,000 TEU, which by a
ratio TEU/Container (or TEU per move of the crane) has
been assumed for modeling purposes at an average
of 90,000 moves per SSG per year. The port owns 26
ship to shore gantry cranes installed at three different
terminals, with a total length of berthing facilities of
4,325 meters.
Taking the average of the current performance per
SSG projected over the period under review (until 2035
according to the traffic forecast) and considering an
Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 89
ANNEXES
MEDIUM HIGH
100,000 TEU 130,000 TEU
30 34
1.65 1.65
1,037 1,037
7 4
4,325 4,325
equipment availability rate of 84 percent, the present
number of installed SSGs will have to be increased by
ten units across the next 14 years (until 2035), in order
to cope with the forecasted volume of containers. Table
19 is structured in phases of five years; that said, the
actual modeling has been conducted for each year.
The authors ran a benchmarking process that replaced
the Port of Jeddah’s current KPI (90,000 moves/SSG/
year) with international benchmarks for medium-
(100,000moves/SSG/year) and high-performing
(130,000 moves/SSG/year) container ports and
projected them for the same period of time and traffic
forecasts. That process found that under the medium-
performance scenario, the port would have to add
an additional seven SSG units, but under the high-
performance scenario, it would not have to add any new
SSG units.
This exercise shows that if the container handling
operations in the port of Jeddah were to be enhanced
by GIT (and other operational improvements), the
procurement of additional ship to shore gantry cranes
could be deferred in time, or even avoided at least for
the period of time covered by the traffic forecast (until
2035). The potential savings are significant, considering
that any additional equipment entails maintenance,
repair and direct operational costs, which are not
contemplated here.
Table 19 below shows what would happen if Jeddah
adopted smart ports capabilities and improves SSG
efficiency, thus foregoing new crane investments.
ANNEXES

TABLE 19: EXPECTED BENEFITS FROM SMART CAPABILITIES AT PORT OF JEDDAH

YEAR
EXPECTED BENEFITS
2016 2020 2025 2030 2035

Consolidated throughput of
containers in TEU 3,776,000 3,016,000 3,745,000 4,460,000 5,214,000

Throughput equivalent to
number of containers (moves) 2,360,000 1,885,000 2,340,625 2,787,500 3,258,750

Number of required SSG with

current average performance of 26 21 26 31 36
90,000 moves/SSG/year

Number of required SSGs by

benchmarking with 100,000 24 19 23 28 33
moves/SSG/year

Number of required SSG by

benchmarking with 130,000 18 15 18 21 25
moves/SSG/year

Expected expenditure for additional
SSG (not including replacements)
for the period 2020 – 2035 at
current performing scenario
At the referential FOB purchase price indicated above,
the port is expected to spend for additional SSGs:
US$ 122,500,000

Expected expenditure for additional Employing the medium performance benchmark,

SSG (not including replacements)
for the period 2020 – 2035 at
the port would be expected to invest for additional SSGS:
medium performance benchmark US$ 79,050,000

Expected expenditure for additional

SSG (not including replacements) Employing the high performance benchmark,
for the period 2020 – 2035 at high the port may not need to invest in additional SSGs
performance benchmark

Achieving the medium performance

benchmark results with the current
US$ 43,450,000
performance, the port could save
this amount between now and 2035

Achieving the high-performance

benchmark results with the current
US$ 133,692,308
performance, the port could save
this amount between now and 2035

Source: Authors’ calculations

90 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia

Costs savings from vessels’ shorter port stays
The BHP, or ship productivity, is an indicator
representing the number of moves per ship per hour.
The BHP is increasingly being used as an indicator for
the performance of a container terminal. The BHP can
be defined as total number of containers loaded and
unloaded between the time of the start and the end
of the cargo handling operations, divided by the time
in hours. This indicator is subject to several influencing
factors, mainly those related to the type and size of
vessel and the stowage plan (location of containers on
board the ships) and obviously, the number of ship to
shore gantry cranes assigned to service a specific vessel.
According to the information received, Jeddah Port
assigns an average of 3 SSGs to each vessel, which
results in an hourly performance of 28.5 moves per SSG
per hour. These parameters have been included in the
benchmarking analysis run with KPIs of medium- and
high-performing ports, i.e. 30 and 34 moves per SSG per
hour, respectively.
60
A restow is a move where a container is off loaded from on board the ship and put back onto the ship either at the same stow position or a
different stow position.
Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 91
ANNEXES
Table 20 below presents the current operational
efficiency of Jeddah Port as compared to these two
potential scenarios (KPIs of 30 and 34 moves per SSG
per hour), where adopting GIT could improve efficiency
and lower the amount of time a vessel spends in the port.
For time computing purposes, a standard average of
5 percent restows60 of containers was used. The port
shared with the authors a rate of 2.5 percent redundant
moves. Additionally, a standardized approach for vessel
maneuvering times was added, at the “moderate” level,
due to the easy access to Jeddah’s berthing facilities.
The gross call time of all vessels staying at the port
annually has been added up for the three scenarios of
performance (current, medium and high performance)
and multiplied by the estimated average daily rate of the
type and size of the vessels calling at Jeddah Port. As a
result of the different number of hours the vessels spend
in the port in every performance scenario, an equivalent
of costs was identified for each case. The difference
between the respective benchmarks and the current
situation represents potential savings for a shipping line
operator in terms of ships’ costs, which could impact
positively on the costs of maritime transportation (i.e.,
freight rates).
ANNEXES

TABLE 20: COMPARISON OF EXPECTED OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY

YEAR
ITEM
2020 2025 2030 2035

Number of Calls per year 2,000 2,000 2,000 2,000

Containers per call 943 1,170 1,394 1,629

Plus 5% restows
990 1,229 1,463 1,711
(noncommercial moves included)

Present KPI: 28.5 moves/SSG/hour

Duration of call time, net

12 15 17 20
(hours actually at berth)
Maneuver time/call
3 3 3 3
(berthing/unberthing hours)

Gross call time (hours) 15 18 20 23

Vessel time Jeddah (hours) 29,563 35,258 40,844 46,734

Medium performer KPI: 30 moves/SSG/hour

Duration of call time, net (hours) 11 14 16 19

Maneuver time/call
3 3 3 3
(berthing/unberthing hours)

Gross call time (hours) 14 17 19 22

Vessel time Jeddah (hours) 27,992 33,307 38,521 44,019

High performer KPI: 34 moves/SSG/hour

Duration of call time, net (hours) 10 12 14 17

Maneuver time/call
3 3 3 3
(berthing/unberthing hours)

Gross call time (hours) 13 15 17 20

Vessel time Jeddah (hours) 25,404 30,095 34,695 39,546

Current Vessel Days/year 1,232 1,469 1,702 1,947

Medium Perf. Vessel Days/year 1,166 1,388 1,605 1,834

Medium Perf. Vessel Days/year 1,059 1,254 1,446 1,648

Vessel accrued day costs/year (current) 49,270,833 58,763,021 68,072,917 77,890,625

Vessel accrued day costs/year (medium) 46,652,778 55,512,153 64,201,389 73,364,583

Vessel accrued day costs/year(high) 42,340,686 50,157,782 57,824,755 65,909,926

POTENTIAL SAVINGS (US$) 6,930,147 8,605,239 10,248,162 11,980,699

Source: Authors’ calculations

92 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
 ANNEXES

Cost savings from improved
container management
Dwell time represents the total period of time a
container remains under the custody of the port
(or the operators) from the moment it touches the
berth until the moment the container leaves the port
under the custody of the merchants by any mode of
transportation.
From a financial perspective, the longer the discharge
process for a vessel, the longer the waiting time and the
higher the costs for the merchants. From an operational
point of view, the longer containers dwell in the terminal,
the more stacking slots have to be provided by the
terminal operator. In summary, improving container
management could provide sizeable economic benefits
for the relevant stakeholders in the transportation chain:
merchants have faster access to their consignments,
terminals reduce the needed stacking space for
containers, and shipping lines can increase the number
of container round-trip voyages per year, achieving
better productivity per container.
The current stacking arrangements in the Port of
Jeddah are estimated at a basis of approximately 23,220
TEU ground slots (ground tier of containers = surface
required) and depending on the stacking height, the
port offers a daily storage capacity of about 92,880 TEU
at a utilization rate of 80 percent and maximum height
of one over five containers (stacking five plus holding
one space available for moves above the five). It is not
expected that the port will require additional areas for
stacking containers to the 2035 time horizon with the
given traffic forecast.
The current dwell time for import containers is an
average of 10 days per container. Note that the
analysis of dwell time in this context is focused on the
importation trade only, and excludes transshipment and
export of containers.
Table 21 below shows the benchmarking exercise with
the dwell times of medium- and high-performance
terminals, i.e. seven and four day dwell times for import
containers. It also includes, as an intermediate result,
the accumulated container days spent every year in
the port under each scenario: current, medium- and
high- performance.
The container costs per day have been estimated at
US$ 7.00/TEU70 and multiplied by the number of days
the containers dwelled in the port under each scenario.
While the financial differences between the three
scenarios should be seen as referential, they clearly
indicate that integrated smart port capabilities can
improve container management.

TABLE 21: DWELL TIMES OF MEDIUM- AND HIGH-PERFORMANCE TERMINALS

ITEMS Description 2016 2020 2025 2030 2035

Import Full 1,100,000 895,000 1,067,000 1,277,000 1,502,000

TEU days
Current DT 10 days/TEU
in port 11,000,000 8,950,000 10,670,000 12,770,000 15,020,000
TEU days
Medium: DT 7 days/TEU
in port 7,700,000 6,265,000 7,469,000 8,939,000 10,514,000
TEU days
High: DT 4 days/TEU
in port 4,400,000 3,580,000 4,268,000 5,108,000 6,008,000

Current Scenario Container

accrued costs (US$) costs 77,000,000 62,650,000 74,690,000 89,390,000 105,140,000

Medium Scenario Container

accrued costs (US$) costs 53,900,000 43,855,000 52,283,000 62,573,000 73,598,000

High Scenario Container

accrued costs (US$) costs 30,800,000 25,060,000 29,876,000 35,756,000 42,056,000

Med to
Yearly savings
current 18,795,000 22,407,000 26,817,000 31,542,000
High to
Yearly savings
current 37,590,000 44,814,000 53,634,000 63,084,000

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 93
ANNEXES
PUBLIC SAFETY USE CASE:
AMBULANCES PREPOSITIONING
AND ROUTING
Deaths caused by road traffic crashes
make up 4.7 percent of all mortalities
in KSA, as compared to the UK, the
USA and Australia, where such fatalities hardly exceed
1.7 percent. Similarly, road fatalities in Saudi Arabia have
increased over the years. In the last decade, traffic-
related deaths per 100,000 people increased from 17.4
to 24, where KSA was found to have the highest share
of traffic death rate compared to high-income countries.
KSA’s accident-to-death ratio is 32:1, and traffic fatalities
were found to be the main cause of death among
16–30 year old males in Saudi Arabia (Al-Hawani, 2019).
Research has shown that prehospital care in the
aftermath of an accident is important to eventual
patient outcomes in emergency situations (Schull et al.,
2003; Murad et al., 2012; Huang et al., 2016). The impact
of traffic congestion on ambulance response time has
been subject to the much examination (Alanazi, 2012;
Alnemer et al., 2016; Almutairi, 2016; Al-Mosaind, 1998).
Use cases in many countries provide examples of some
of the ways GIT is able to help alleviate the burden
of traffic on ambulance response times. However, in
emergency response situations, it is not enough to rely
on motorists to yield to ambulances in heavy traffic—
there are several reports from around the world that
have shown the costs (often in the number of lives lost)
of this complacency. For cardiac episodes, survival
rates for patients fall about 10 percent for every minute
that they go untreated61. In terms of costs, researchers
in Thailand found that reducing the response time
of emergency services by just one minute saved an
average of US$ 10,190 in healthcare costs per patient.62
61
American Heart Association.
RapidSOS. (2015, April 1). Outcomes: Quantifying the Impact of Emergency Response Times. Retrieved from https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/549701/
62
Documents/RapidSOS_Outcomes_White_Paper_-_2015_4.pdf
94 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
The analysis in this section will focus primarily on
two applications: (1) intelligent vehicle routing for
ambulances and (2) GIS-based load-responsive
ambulance prepositioning. GIS tools offer dynamic
vehicle routing solutions that perform shortest path
analysis to a given destination based on real-time
traffic congestion data. Similarly, GIS can analyze
congestion patterns and identify choke points across
road networks. This data can be used to establish
ambulance posts at locations that allow emergency
medical services (EMS) to avoid traffic delays and
arrive at emergencies more quickly.
In the absence of sufficient data to develop similar
models to estimate what the benefits would be in KSA,
the authors made a number of assumptions and used
several papers from around the world to help frame the
analysis and make the calculations. First, the values the
authors used to represent the demand for ambulance
services across KSA (total number of accidents) assume
that requests to the Saudi Red Crescent Authority
(SRCA) are responsible for the entire volume of
emergency medical services demand in Saudi Arabia.
Estimates were derived using road traffic data provided
by the General Directorate of Civil Defense (Ministry
of Interior). Table 22 shows baseline regional traffic
accident fatality rates, which were calculated using
annual records of road accidents, injuries and reported
fatalities in each region.
 ANNEXES

TABLE 22: BASELINE TRAFFIC ACCIDENT STATISTICS IN KSA

TOTAL NUMBER FATALITY RATE

REGION INJURIES FATALITIES
OF ACCIDENTS (%)

AR-RIYADH 2,897 898 79,884 1.1

MAKKAH AL-MUKARRAMAH 2,250 292 18,299 1.6
AL-MADINAH AL-MUNAWARAH 1,292 362 20,547 1.8
AL-QASEEM 975 180 17,510 1.0
HAIL 776 161 6,955 2.3
EASTERN REGION 1,793 515 45,077 1.1
TABOUK 573 214 10,034 2.1
NORTHERN BORDERS 260 65 10,705 0.6
JAZAN 1,098 428 19,572 2.2
NAJRAN 435 145 3,124 4.6
ASEER 771 585 25,964 2.3
AL-JOUF 158 85 3,652 2.3

TOTAL 13,278 3,930 261,323

Source: General Directorate of Civil Defense (Ministry of the Interior) and authors’ calculations

The average response time for ambulances in each
region was obtained by aggregating response time
data also provided by the General Directorate of
Civil Defense. Four scenarios were then generated to
estimate the potential time savings, with each scenario
drawing from different GI applications in four studies.
The four scenarios each use GI-based prepositioning of
ambulances or intelligent routing to improve response
times. Scenario 1 was developed based on findings in a
study by Gonzalez et al. (2011) which found that GIS-
based intelligent routing of ambulances reduced the
average response times of ambulances by an average
of 16 percent. Scenario 2 used results from a study
by Panahi & Delavar (2009) which found that their
intelligent deployment strategy reduced the average
response time for ambulances by 20 percent. Similarly,
Scenario 3 was based on results from a study by the
US Federal Highway Commission (2006), which found
that the use of intelligent vehicle routing can reduce
emergency response time by as much as 23 percent.
Finally, Scenario 4 drew from a study by Ong et al.
(2010) which found that the strategic prepositioning
of ambulances reduced the average ambulance
response time to out-of-hospital cardiac arrests
(OOHHA) by 30 percent. The baseline fatality rate
for each region was calculated using regional data
on traffic accidents and road fatalities provided by
GASGI. Table 23 shows the estimated changes to the
average response times in each region of KSA using
the two different GI technologies.

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 95
ANNEXES

TABLE 23: AMBULANCE RESPONSE TIMES IN KSA

CURRENT INTELLIGENT AMBULANCE

AMBULANCE PRE-POSITIONING
AVERAGE ROUTING
REGION RESPONSE
TIME SCENARIO 2 SCENARIO 3 SCENARIO 1 SCENARIO 4

AR-RIYADH 0:18:39 0:14:55 0:14:22 0:15:40 0:13:03

MAKKAH AL-MUKARRAMAH 0:14:58 0:11:58 0:11:31 0:12:34 0:10:29

AL-MADINAH AL-MUNAWARAH 0:11:05 0:08:52 0:08:32 0:09:19 0:07:46

AL-QASEEM 0:10:10 0:08:08 0:07:50 0:08:32 0:07:07

HAIL 0:11:14 0:08:59 0:08:39 0:09:26 0:07:52

EASTERN REGION 0:14:24 0:11:31 0:11:05 0:12:06 0:10:05

TABOUK 0:11:19 0:09:03 0:08:43 0:09:30 0:07:55

NORTHERN BORDERS 0:08:43 0:06:58 0:06:43 0:07:19 0:06:06

JAZAN 0:13:37 0:10:54 0:10:29 0:11:26 0:09:32

NAJRAN 0:11:41 0:09:21 0:09:00 0:09:49 0:08:11

AL-BAHA 0:10:44 0:08:35 0:08:16 0:09:01 0:07:31

ASEER 0:13:42 0:10:58 0:10:33 0:11:30 0:09:35

AL-JOUF 0:09:59 0:07:59 0:07:41 0:08:23 0:06:59

Source: General Directorate of Civil Defense (Ministry of the Interior) and authors’ calculations

To determine the impact of lowering ambulance between EMS response time and MVC fatality, and
response times on traffic accident fatalities, the authors subsequently calculated how much mortality decreases
relied on the paper by Byrne et al (2019) that measured when ambulances response times are reduced. Using
the relationship between emergency medical services the paper’s mathematical function, the authors
(EMS) response times and Motor Vehicle Crash (MVC) estimated63 the new fatality rates for each KSA region
mortality, at the population level in counties across and for each scenario (Table 24).
the United States. The study analyzed the median
Finally, in order to more precisely estimate the decrease
EMS response time and MVC-related deaths from
in traffic fatality rates that GI technologies can provide,
2,268 counties, using data derived from the National
the value of the potential lives saved in each region by
Emergency Medical Service Information System. The
the introduction of GI is expressed in monetary terms.
authors concluded that longer response times were
Table 25 shows the number of individual fatalities
significantly associated with higher rates of MVC
that would be avoided under each scenario. The KSA
mortality after adjusting for measures of rurality, on-
estimated Value of Statistical Life (see Box 2) was used
scene and transport times, access to trauma resources,
to calculate the economic value of the foregone fatalities
and traffic safety laws. Using more than 2.2 million
under each scenario.
datapoints from this study, the authors estimated a
mathematical function that represents the relationship
63
We calculated the point elasticity for different response times. The point elasticity is the ratio of percentage change in emergency response
times to percentage change in fatality rate at a specific point on the function curve. The elasticity ranges from 1.038 in Riyadh (i.e. a 10% reduction
in response time will decrease the fatality rate in 10.4%) to 1.08 in Northern Borders (i.e. a 10% reduction in response time will decrease the fatality
rate in 10.8%). This implies that areas where the current response time is longer will benefit less from GIT use in EMS.

96 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
 ANNEXES

TABLE 24: ESTIMATED REGIONAL TRAFFIC FATALITY RATES IN KSA

CURRENT
REGION FATALITY RATE SCENARIO 1 SCENARIO 2 SCENARIO 3 SCENARIO 4
(%)

AR-RIYADH 1.1% 0.94% 0.89% 0.86% 0.77%

MAKKAH AL-MUKARRAMAH 1.6% 1.33% 1.26% 1.21% 1.09%
AL-MADINAH AL-MUNAWARAH 1.8% 1.46% 1.39% 1.33% 1.20%
AL-QASEEM 1.0% 0.85% 0.81% 0.77% 0.70%
HAIL 2.3% 1.92% 1.82% 1.75% 1.58%
EASTERN REGION 1.1% 0.95% 0.90% 0.87% 0.78%
TABOUK 2.1% 1.77% 1.68% 1.61% 1.45%
NORTHERN BORDERS 0.6% 0.50% 0.48% 0.46% 0.41%
AL-BAHA 4.6% 3.82% 3.63% 3.48% 3.14%
JAZAN 2.2% 1.82% 1.72% 1.65% 1.49%
NAJRAN 4.6% 3.85% 3.65% 3.50% 3.16%
ASEER 2.3% 1.87% 1.78% 1.71% 1.54%
AL-JOUF 2.3% 1.93% 1.83% 1.75% 1.58%
Source: Authors’ calculations

TABLE 25: ESTIMATED ECONOMIC VALUE OF LIVES SAVED

TOTAL NUMBER FATALITIES AVOIDED

REGION OF ACCIDENTS SCENARIO 1 SCENARIO 2 SCENARIO 3 SCENARIO 4

AR-RIYADH 79,884 149 186 214 280

MAKKAH AL-MUKARRAMAH 18,299 49 61 70 92
AL-MADINAH AL-MUNAWARAH 20,547 62 77 89 116
AL-QASEEM 17,510 31 39 44 58
HAIL 6,955 27 34 39 51
EASTERN REGION 45,077 86 108 124 162
TABOUK 10,034 36 46 52 68
NORTHERN BORDERS 10,705 11 14 16 21
AL-BAHA 186 14 17 20 26
JAZAN 19,572 73 91 104 136
NAJRAN 3,124 25 31 36 46
ASEER 25,964 98 123 142 185
AL-JOUF 3,652 15 18 21 27
TOTAL VALUE IN BILLIONS OF US$ $2.1 $2.62 $3.01 $3.93
Source: Authors’ calculations

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 97
ANNEXES
HEALTH USE CASE:
WIRELESS ALERT MESSAGING
In the Arabian Peninsula’s hot, dry climate,
sandstorms are anything but rare. Saudi
Arabia is 95 percent desert. Rub’ Al
Khali, the biggest desert in the Arabian Peninsula and
one of the largest sand deserts in the world, occupies
southern Saudi Arabia. Closer to the borders with Iraq
and Kuwait is An-Nafud Desert, whose sand dunes
often exceed a height of 30 meters (100 feet). Added
to these giant masses of sand are sizzling summertime
temperatures and erratic precipitation. Therefore,
sandstorms represent a major natural hazard in KSA.
Their pulmonary consequences can be life-threatening,
especially to those with a history of allergies, asthma,
and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases. Novel
presentations of respiratory diseases caused by
sandstorms can now be traced to specific chemical and
organic components of sandstorms. However, according
to a preliminary analysis by a World Bank team, natural
sources of air pollution, such as geological dust from
sandstorms, contribute only about one-fourth of overall
air pollution (for Particulate Matter of 2.5 microns in size
or smaller (PM2.5)).
Regardless of whether air pollution is caused by
anthropogenic or natural sources, a forthcoming World
Bank study found that ambient air pollution in Riyadh is
about four to six times the level recommended by the
World Health Organization (WHO). Concentrations in
Dammam are also about four to six times; in Jeddah two
to three times; and in Makkah three to four times the
recommended maximum. In 2013, Saudi Arabia ranked
third in population-weighted mean PM2.5 concentration,
at (54 µg/m3), trailing only Mauritania (70 µg/m3) and
China (55 µg/m3).
64
Formerly known as the Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS), and prior to that as the Personal Localized Alerting Network (PLAN),
65
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2018-02-28/pdf/2018-03990.pdf
98 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
In the United States, an important application of GIT
is in a public safety system called Wireless Emergency
Alerts (WEA). WEA,64 is an alerting network that allows
customers who own an enabled mobile device to
receive geographically-targeted, text message-like alerts
warning of imminent safety threats in their area. It was
deployed in April 2012 through a unique public/private
partnership between the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC), the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA), and the wireless industry
with the singular objective of enhanced public safety.
In case of a critical public safety emergency (such as
a tornado, flash flood, dust storm, police alert, etc.),
authorized national, state, or local government officials
send information to WEA, which authenticates the alert
and sends it to participating wireless carriers (i.e. AT&T,
T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon in the US). These wireless
carriers then push the alerts from cell towers to mobile
phones in the affected area with a unique attention
signal and vibration.
These alerts are geographically targeted, meaning a
customer living in New York City would not receive an
alert if they happen to be in Chicago when the alert was
sent. Similarly, someone visiting New York City from
Chicago on that day would receive the alert (FEMA,
2011). It’s completely free for cell phone customers,
and as long as the customer owns a WEA enabled
mobile device, they are automatically signed up for the
alert. Effective November 30, 2019, WEA was further
enhanced by narrowing its geo-targeting to 100
percent of the target area with no more than a 0.1-mile
overshoot. The benefit resulting from this improvement
is three-fold: reduced fatalities (US$ 134 million),
injuries (at least US$ 2 million) and costs for emergency
services (US$ 48 million)65. The FCC estimated that
benefits are significantly larger than the program’s US$
41 million cost.

Investing in a Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) system
can be extremely beneficial, as these messages have
an impact on people’s physiological arousal, emotional
response, cognitive processing, and behavior. People
respond to these messages as a threat, and the tone
accompanying the messages have an impact on the
recipients’ stress response, as seen by the fact that
the general trend for all respondents is to have an
increase in physiological response right after getting the
message (UCLA, 2016). A study of 33,888 individuals
taking part in the 2005 Behavioral Risk Factor
Surveillance System, reported a 31 percent change in
outdoor activity due to media alerts among adults with
lifetime asthma and a 16 percent change amongst those
without asthma. When the combined effects of media
alerts and individual perception were examined, the
prevalence of outdoor activity change increased to 75
percent among those with lifetime asthma and to 68
percent among without asthma (Wen, Balluz, & Mokdad,
2009). Barwick et al. (2019) have shown that an air
quality monitoring and disclosure program in China led
to significant behavioral change, including reducing
outdoor activities and an increase in the purchase of
air purifiers, when environmental quality was poor.
As a result, air pollution’s mortality cost was reduced
by nearly 7 percent, amounting to an annual benefit
of US$ 17 billion. Therefore, by obtaining information
on air quality and sandstorms, people can adjust their
behavior and significantly reduce their exposure to
air pollution (Barwick et al, 2019). It has been proven
that less exposure to air pollution leads to dramatic
reductions in asthma, heart attacks, and the number of
low birthweight and premature babies (Wen, Balluz, &
Mokdad, 2009).
Given that no WEA system exists in KSA, and that no
study has been done on behavioral response to alert
TABLE 26: ANNUAL POLLUTION-RELATED COST AND LIFE SAVINGS FROM WEA (MILLIONS OF US$)
WELFARE LOSSES AVOIDED (IN MILLIONS)
ANNUAL REDUCTION IN DEATHS
Source: The World Bank and Authors Calculations
Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 99
ANNEXES
systems in KSA, the analysis here relies on benefits
transfer and sensitivity analysis. Barwick et al (2020),
discussed above, is the most recent and similar study on
the impact of WEA systems. That study found that the
WEA led to a 7 percent reduction in annual mortality
costs. The 7 percent was calculated by first using
location-specific mortality data along with pollution
data to estimate an elasticity of pollution-mortality. It
was found that the link between pollution and mortality
declines by 5 percent after the pollution information
dissemination. The 0.7 percent mortality-PM10 elasticity
is 0.7, so dividing the 5 percent results in the 7 percent
reduction in mortality costs. Considering the different
culture, geography, and meteorology between China
and KSA, three mortality cost reduction scenarios are
assumed here: 5 percent for low, 7 percent for baseline,
and 10 percent for high. Since there are natural disasters
and public safety events other than sandstorms, the
calculations here provide a lower bound benefit.
To estimate the annual economic costs of premature
death resulting from pollution in KSA, the authors
used the results obtained by the World Bank and IHME
(2016) report which used a welfare-based approach to
monetize the increased fatality risk from air pollution
according to individuals’ willingness to pay (WTP).
WTP captures the marginal trade-offs that individuals
are willing to make to reduce their chances of dying.
According to this study, dust concentration and storms
cost KSA over US$ 32 billion in premature death costs
annually and pollution-related deaths average 6,285
per year. Therefore, assuming the 7 percent reduction
in annual mortality from a WEA system, the potential
annual welfare-based loss avoidance would be US$
1.364 million or 440 people that could be saved from
pollution-related death. Table 26 presents the results for
the three scenarios.
LOW (5%) BASELINE (7%) HIGH (10%)
US$ 974.2 US$ 1,363.8 US$ 1,948.4
314 440 440
ANNEXES

INFRASTRUCTURE USE CASE: the pavement life by 10 to 26 years. This reduction

was mainly a result of the 30 percent reduction in
INTELLIGENT ROAD PAVING compaction time and also the reduction in QC/QA costs.
Geospatial tools have shown an enormous
To illustrate the potential savings, the authors
potential for generating benefits in road
considered the use of Intelligent Compacting in KSA
construction and maintenance. The Kingdom
as part of the repaving process for which data are
of Saudi Arabia, with its vast infrastructure program and
available. First, they estimated that the Kingdom of
ambition to be at the frontier of technological progress, is
Saudi Arabia currently has approximately 180,600
well placed to capture the economic (and social) benefits
lane-km (see Table 27).
afforded in this sector by the spectacular progress made
in geolocation, powerful data collection and processing Using information from KSA’s Ministry of Transportation
tools, and construction modelling. and comparing it to unit costs and cost overruns of road
infrastructure projects in Africa (Mubila et al 2014), the
As discussed in Section 4.7 of this report, there is an
authors assumed that repaving one lane of road using
estimated backlog of US$ 1.107 billion in maintaining the
a conventional method would cost US$ 250,000 per
Kingdom’s roads and at least US$ 63 billion needed in
km. As explained above, using IC will bring two types of
new roads investments. By employing new technologies,
benefits: 1) the repaving costs will be 37 percent lower
the Kingdom can potentially save time and money.
and 2) the lifespan of the pavement can be extended
Intelligent Compactors (IC) is a technology used to
by between 10 and 26 years (Savan et al, 2015). As the
achieve the required pavement compaction using
authors could not know how KSA’s weather and other
Automated Machine Guidance (AMG) which involves
physical and geographic characteristics may affect IC,
the integration of positioning tools into construction
they took a very conservative approach and assumed
machinery. One of the largest benefits of IC is that it
that IC would only add an additional five years to a
provides a more uniform compaction, and a longer life
road’s lifespan compared to conventional methods.
of the paved roadway. Two papers explore the cost
The implication is, assuming that the lane-km length
effectiveness of the conventional versus automated
of KSA’s road network remains constant, KSA will need
method, by collecting the cost data of compaction
to repave ten percent of its network every year under
for conventional and intelligent compaction, for one
conventional compacting methods, but only 6.67
unit (km or mile) of road construction. In the US
percent of its network if using IC (assuming that the
context, Savan et al. (2015)66 found that IC, when used
goal is the maintenance of the current quality of roads).
effectively, can produce a 54 percent decrease in
In summary, the authors used the following inputs for
compaction costs on a new roadway section, 37 percent
the model as seen in Table 28:
in pavement rehabilitation, and in both cases can extend

TABLE 27: CALCULATION OF ROAD LENGTH

ROAD LENGTH NO. OF NO. OF

ROAD TYPE
(KM) LANES LANE-KM

EXPRESSWAYS 5,300 6 31,800

DUAL LANE ROADS 12,700 4 50,800

SINGLE LANE ROADS 49,000 2 98,000

TOTAL 67,000 180,600

Source: The number of lane-km are calculated by authors from the road lengths from the National Transport Strategy 2030.

66
Savan, et al (2015) “Implementation of Intelligent Compaction Technologies For Road Constructions In Wyoming,” Department Of Civil And
Architectural Engineering, University Of Wyoming. https://www.ugpti.org/resources/reports/downloads/mpc15-281.pdf

100 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
 ANNEXES

TABLE 28: ROAD UNIT COSTS AND LIFE SPAN

COST PER LANE/

TECHNOLOGY ROAD LIFESPAN
KM IN US$

CONVENTIONAL 250,000 10 years

INTELLIGENT COMPACTING 157,500 15 years

Using these inputs, the authors modeled the cost of
maintaining the KSA road network using each of the two
technologies, and then estimated the potential savings
from both the lower unit cost and the longer lifespan
resulting from automatic, machine-guided intelligent
compacting. The authors found that maintaining the
current road network in KSA using a conventional
compacting method would cost an estimated US$ 4.51
billion (18,060 kms at US$ 250,000) as compared to
US$ 1.89 billion (12,040 kms at US$ 157,500) using IC.
Assuming a discount rate of 7.5 percent and a time
period of 15 years, this yields an NPV of US$ 23.1 billion
savings, which is equivalent to an annual benefit of
US$ 2.62 billion. To take into account uncertainty
around the quality of the data and the assumptions
used, the authors also estimated a scenario where
the IC compacting cost savings is 18.7 percent lower
and exactly the same as the conventional compacting
(0 percent savings). These results are summarized in
Table 29.

TABLE 29: NPV AND ANNUAL SAVINGS FOR DIFFERENT SCENARIOS (BILLIONS OF US$)

ANNUAL
TECHNOLOGY NPV
SAVINGS

BASE SCENARIO
(37% cost savings/5yrs extended lifespan)
$23.1 $2.62

SCENARIO 1
(18.5% cost savings/5yrs extended lifespan)
$18.2 $2.06

SCENARIO 2
(0% cost savings/5yrs extended lifespan)
$13.3 $1.51

Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 101
ANNEXES
EXAMPLES OF
GI USES IN TOURISM
The travel and tourism sector in Saudi
Arabia has sustained consistent rates of
growth due in part to deliberate efforts by
the government to make tourism a more significant
part of the country’s economy. Travel and tourism
contributed an estimated US$ 71 billion to the country’s
GDP in 2019 (up from US$ 64 billion in 2017) and are
forecasted to contribute as much as 11 percent of the
GDP by 2028 (World Travel and Tourism Council, 2018).
In keeping with KSA’s efforts to diversify its economy
in line with the Saudi Vision 2030 objectives, there
continues to be new modern and innovative efforts
by Saudi government to increase tourism activity and
attract more international visitors. The Saudi Vision
2030 has earmarked US$ 64 billion over the next
decade to culture, leisure and entertainment, with a
view to increasing the number of international visitors
to the Kingdom each year (Nurunnabi, 2017). As a
result, international arrivals to KSA are expected to
increase by an average of 5.5 percent annually over
the next five years. Most notably, the government
recently announced plans to issue more tourist visas and
open the country up to more leisure-seeking visitors,
which previously were less of a priority than catering
to business clients, religious visitors, and potential
investors. This expansion is expected to attract more
visitation and tourist spending in KSA and establish the
Kingdom as a regional tourism hub. In addition to the
potential for increased commercial activity from tourists,
Saudis spend about US$ 6 billion annually on leisure
and entertainment (US Department of Commerce,
2020)—the bulk of that being spent overseas. Growing
the tourism industry in KSA will help motivate Saudis to
spend a larger proportion of this money domestically,
and help continue to grow the sector and economy.
102 Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia
The current shift towards building a more tourist-
friendly Saudi Arabia has been aided by the fact
that KSA already possesses a range of attractions,
historical sites, and a transportation sector with the
capacity to accommodate increased activity (e.g.,
a metro rail system is currently under construction
in Riyadh). This infrastructure was developed to
consistently host religious visitors including (travel,
leisure, accommodation, etc.) services. Other
significant investments include ambitious plans for
the city of Neom and the recently announced Red Sea
Development Project.
Tourism Management
GI technologies can contribute significantly to building
and managing a dynamic tourism industry. Knowing
where points of interest are and how to get to them
are important parts of any tourist experience. As
such, GIT and mapping data provide a way to collect,
manage, analyze, and display this information for public
consumption. The following section identifies GIT use
cases in tourism sectors from around the world, to
show the many ways by which GIT has been adapted
to improve tourism activity, and how some of these use
cases can be applied to KSA
Tourist attractions database
Tourism officials in the Serbian cities of Zlatibor and
Zlatar in Croatia use GIT to create an online tourism
information system that incorporates several layers of
thematic maps containing useful information about
locations of monuments, hotels, restaurants, and the
best travel routes.
Officials in Nigeria and in parts of China have developed
comprehensive Travel Geographic Information Systems
(TGIS) that serve as one-stop-shops for all tourist
enquiries for visitors. The ability to integrate multi-
source data into these systems allows for a range of
different possible queries by users—geographic location,
weather conditions, traffic patterns, crowding at specific
sites, etc.

Increased tourism in parts of rural South Korea that
already had to contend with limited resources meant
that officials needed to figure out how to better manage
and distribute resources in these communities so that
they could accommodate the increasing strain on
their amenities (food, transportation, etc.). Using GIT,
researchers conducted spatial analyses on a group
of rural villages to identify “core” or “central” villages
to serve as linkages between the villages and hubs
for resource replenishment. Like South Korea, many
of Saudi Arabia’s historical sites are situated in less
urbanized parts of the country, and there is therefore
the possibility that rural communities will soon have to
contend with similar problems.
Crowd management and tourism maps
GIT offers several applications aimed at improved crowd
management that could be useful if applied to the KSA
context. In Shanghai, China, tourists can digitally “check-
in” to a location and that geotagged data is used to
create a crowding map at popular destinations to inform
visitors of wait times before they arrive at a location.
These technologies, if adapted to KSA and religious
visitors, could significantly change the pilgrimage
experience and improve the efficiency of movement.
At Walt Disney World theme park—which handles 30
million visitors a year—spatial analysis is used to reduce
visitor wait-times in lines for attractions and crowding
on walkways. From a command center, managers can
analyze movement patterns of visitors and use a range
of techniques to draw visitors to other, less crowded
attractions, or to know when to open an extra cash
register to attend to visitors more quickly.
In Uttarakhand, India—home to more than 30 UNESCO
world heritage sites—tourism officials created a GIS Cell,
which works to map and update the locations of and
directions to all holy temples in the district. In addition
to helping visitors locate these sites, the maps help
notify visitors of protected areas or areas where certain
customs or laws should be observed. Particularly in
KSA’s preliminary stages of welcoming non-religious
tourists, applications such as this one could be helpful to
tourists who may not be familiar with Saudi customs.
Estimating the Economic Value of Geospatial Information and Technologies to the Economy of Saudi Arabia 103
ANNEXES
Religious pilgrimage remains the biggest draw for
visitors to KSA. Each year millions of pilgrims visit Mecca
at the same time for the Hajj Pilgrimage and then again
for the Umrah throughout the year. Gatherings such as
these generate large groups of people and can make
it difficult to effectively manage crowds. This leads to
delays (traffic, bathrooms, hotels, etc.) and sometimes
even health emergencies. Thus, use cases like the ones
above can help to distribute pilgrims more evenly
throughout the different religious sites, improving the
experience and reducing safety risks.
3D Virtual tours
Innovative and effective marketing and advertisement
campaigns have been shown to have a considerable
influence on the destination choice of tourists (Kim et
al., 2005), and upon arriving at a destination, a tourist’s
ability to confidently explore a city and conveniently
navigate its attractions is an important predictor of their
satisfaction with the experience and their likelihood of
returning. As discussed earlier, geospatial technology
provides a range of applications that enable tourists
to do so with much more ease. The Saudi Ministry of
Tourism already uses GIT to advance the country’s
tourism sector with its Tourism Geographic Information
System (TGIS)—an integrated web-based system that
includes a tourist map app and a 360-degree virtual
tour. These features help expand the tourist experience
for visitors and improve the ways they are able to
interact with the country’s many attractions. The
benefits from GIT are not limited to these uses. More
recent advancements in GIT have introduced even more
innovative applications that further improve the tourist
experience. This includes virtual reality experiences
and 3D, 360-degree video tours of popular tourist
destinations, which have been shown to provide similar
levels of tourist satisfaction to real-world experiences
(Wagler & Hanus, 2018).
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