Title: Defining Agricultural Holdings in the Najd Region of Dhofar Governorate: An Integrated GeoAI, GIS, and Remote Sensing Approach
Short Biography:
Ahmed Khalifa Ali Al-Hatmi is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Bayanat Geographical Consulting, having established the firm in 2013 to deliver innovative geospatial and utility survey services. Under his leadership, the organization has achieved sustained growth and market profitability by consistently implementing cutting-edge technologies and industry’s best practices. With over 13 years of experience in ESRI GIS Enterprise platforms and remote sensing, Ahmed specializes in delivering advanced spatial data analysis and mapping solutions. He holds a Bachelor in Geography from Sultan Qaboos University (2010).
Abstract:
Accurate, up-to-date knowledge of agricultural land is central to food security, water governance, and equitable land administration, yet cadastral systems in many regions remain fragmented, manual, and slow to detect encroachment or change.
This paper presents an integrated GeoAI, GIS, and remote sensing framework developed to define and monitor agricultural holdings across the Najd region of Dhofar Governorate, Sultanate of Oman, commissioned by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning. Combining cadastral records, differential GPS field surveys, and multitemporal satellite imagery from 2009 and 2024, the project trained and deployed deep learning models, including UNET, Mask-RCNN, Vision Transformers, and the Segment Anything Model, to delineate farm boundaries and classify land use within an enterprise PostgreSQL/PostGIS, QGIS, and GeoServer environment. Across 13,362 km² and 1,894 surveyed points, the analysis identified 1,196 agricultural holdings and recorded a 77.7 percent increase in registered agricultural land, from 192.8 million to 342.7 million square meters between 2009 and 2024.
Delivered within three months despite years of prior delay, the resulting platform replaces fragmented manual records with an accurate, automated, and scalable geospatial system, offering a replicable model for modernizing agricultural land administration in arid and semi-arid regions.