OSGOF Adopts Drone Technology To Map FCT

The Office of the Surveyor General of the Federation (OSGOF) has adopted cutting-edge drone technology to create a highly detailed topographical map of the Federal Capital Territory.

The Surveyor-General, Mr Abuduganiyu Adebomehin, who made this known at a one-day workshop yesterday in Abuja said the technology is the first of its kind in Africa and would aid in search and rescue, curb insecurity, and give disaster alerts like flood, among others.

The workshop was on the Use Cases for the Very High-Resolution Drone Imagery and Street View Data Collected for Part of Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC), organised by the OSGOF.

Adebomehin explained that the project, undertaken in collaboration with the PLACE, United States marked a significant milestone in Nigeria’s quest to harness the power of geospatial data for sustainable development and smart city initiatives.

“We are processing about 17,000 images and that is why if you are not going to take it to the cloud, it is not something you can just do.

“It is the geospatial management and your information that you are able to manage that is shaping the world. We do not want Nigeria to be left behind. That is why we have to go all out of our way,” he said.

He called for a collaborative effort among organisations to leverage its usage.
In his presentation, Head of Department, Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Department, AYGF, Surveyor Azeez  Afeez, said the constitutional mandates of the OSGOF is to coordinate survey, mapping activities, produce and disseminate accurate, reliable and adequate geospatial data and information.
Afeez said these helped the government to make informed decisions to stimulate good governance.

He said OSGOF adopted the mapping technology because of the realisation that the map could help to solve all kinds of humanitarian challenges, agricultural improvement, disaster response, quick response to natural disaster, security among others.

He called for the need to also leverage digital twin which involves creating virtual representations of physical objects for real-time data and imagery for border control like monitoring movements, aircraft that comes to the airport, among others.

“Digital twin is for cities now. I have  seen the digital twin created for airports in South Korea that they monitor the movement of people and planes that come to the airport in real time.

“We can do that. We can apply digital twins in almost any area of our lives. To a layman, digital twin is like capturing a building virtually in a computer.

“So if we need to make some amendments in the building like renovation, we can do it in our system, saving us time and resources.”

According to him, digital twin is the foundation for smart city without which Nigeria cannot run autonomous land.

Also, Geospatial Technology Lead at the PLACE, United States, Mr Waddah Hago, said PLACE is a non-profit organisation working to achieve modern-day mapping.

Hago said this is achieved by creating a trusted intermediary between public and private good providers to deliver hyperlocal, accurate and detailed optical imagery of the earth’s surface.
He commended the OSGOF for the collaboration in actualising modern-day mapping.