Use of GIS for Highway Maintenance & Construction Planning

The process of creating and maintaining roadway infrastructure in India, however, continues to be complicated by factors including rising urbanization, lack of funding, and challenges in integrating sustainable measures.

Add to this, the problem of a "siloed" approach to planning for highway infrastructure, which is only aggravated due to a lack of integration, interconnectivity, and interoperability among different stakeholders.

The Vision of the study was to encourage informed decision-making and integrated planning and maintenance of highway infrastructure, with a focus on enhancing communication between different stakeholders.

Stakeholders involved State governments, private players (contractors, builders, data and service providers, analysts, public-private partnership participants), citizen communities, and highway authorities.

Objective

1. To analyze highway alignment and factors that influence alignment studies

2. To prepare orthorectified images and superimpose the final contours of satellite imagery to be used in the alignment design

Solution and Implementation Agency-wide data was integrated using GIS technology to improve operational efficiencies and outcomes. The highway management team further used Geospatial technologies for the following applications and solutions as part of the project:

Transportation Planning: GIS software was used to establish a methodology for informing and supporting strategic decision-making models, such as those used to foresee travel demand and plan capital enhancements.

Highway Asset Management: Mobile devices with GIS capabilities and transport-based DBMS are required. Field workers may carry a wealth of GIS data, easily find key locations, and conduct thorough inspections using any number of mobile devices.

Benefits

Traffic Monitoring: GIS proved beneficial in presenting a complete picture of the current traffic conditions because of its ability to combine data feeds and offer dashboard displays. GIS-integrated traffic management helps visually monitor real-time jams and related data to respond swiftly to vehicle problems.

Construction Management: Companies are able to track performance using GIS, which is associated with project management and financial applications. GIS also provides project employees access to these datasets and information via a browser interface.