Amman: Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) signed Wednesday with the Department of Land and Survey (DLS) and the Royal Jordanian Geographic Center (RJGC) the Minutes of Meeting for its Technical Cooperation Project titled "Project for Development of Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS) for Proper Land Management." Kanagawa Makoto, Senior Director from JICA HQ signed on behalf of JICA, while Ahmad Al Emoush, General Manager of DLS, and Muammar Haddadin, Director General of RJGC, signed jointly on behalf of the Government of Jordan.
According to Jordan News Agency, the project focuses on human resource development and capacity building of RJGC and DLS to implement and maintain a unified national geographic coordinate system aligned to an International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF), which is important for proper land management of Jordan as well as utilizing CORS network. As the project will help Jordan on the smooth transformation to the ITRF system, it will improve Jordan's overall National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI).
In addition to the capacity building of the related staff of DLS and RJGC, the project will include the provision of some related equipment to the CORS technology; a data center server for RJGC, which is rack mounted and capable of providing real-time data to IGS, a Bernese Software, which is an analytical tool helping to do baseline analysis, a GNSS Management Software, which helps on the data collection, storage, analysis, monitoring and provision of data for static survey of 50 CORS, and lastly, an additional license that would help the DLS to add one more CORS to its GNSS management software.
Initially, the CORS new station will be installed in a location in Jordan's eastern part, while the data center will be installed in a location at the RJGC premises. The project will stretch over 2 years starting from February 2026, and will involve a number of Japanese consultants and specialized technical experts visiting Jordan during this period and thus contributing to transferring their knowledge, technical experience and best practices to the Jordanian officials.