Developing a Gis Based Road Pavement Information and Management System in Kenya: a Case Study of Nairobi Central Business District
Abstract
Poor co-ordination and inefficient flow of information in the Roads
Department, Ministry of Roads & Public Works has been a major contributor
to inaccuracy in monitoring, management, planning and subsequent
development of the road network in Kenya. There is need to establish a
strategy to prevent an infrastructure catastrophe. Indeed, building more
infrastructure than can be properly maintained causes serious deterioration of
the existing infrastructure. Sustainable development from a highway
management perspective can be equated to qualitative development, which
improves the current condition of the highway system, rather than expanding
its physical resources. The main objective of this project is to demonstrate the
effectiveness of GIS for making sound and timely decisions about road
pavements. This is achieved by development of a GIS-based pavement
management system for the Nairobi Central Business District (CBD) as a
case study. The system was developed in Arc view. The three major results of
this project are: (1) a database of spatial and non spatial data that is valuable
for pavement management of the roads in Nairobi CBD; (2) integration of
models for predicting future pavement conditions based on the current
conditions; and (3) development of user interfaces for querying and analyzing
the database. The developed system utilises pavement condition and traffic
data for conducting the analysis. It employs models that predict pavement
conditions for the future. The system is anticipated to considerably improve
the decision-making process involved in managing pavements.
Publisher
University of Nairobi, Department of Geography and Environmental studies