Developing A Web Map For Civil Engineering Applications: A Case Study Of Laikipa County

Abstract

Information Communication Technology is one of the greatest technological revolutions of our age and a key driver of economic prosperity among nations. Today information is regarded as a resource and therefore a factor of production. This migration towards an information society is enabled by the internet and most importantly the World Wide Web. The goal of this project was to develop a web map that shares key spatial data consumed in Kenya for Civil engineering applications using Laikipia County as a case study. The idea for this project came from the proposal by the Kenya government to develop the Kenya National Spatial Data Infrastructure (KNSDI) which began in 2001 as part of vision 2030 to allow sharing of spatial information among organizations and the public; however the project was never completed due to lack of support. Potential beneficiaries of such a web map would include: the government by making delivery of spatial data to the public as a service easier and civil engineering practitioners. The most common web maps currently in use world-wide are Google maps, Microsoft Bing maps and OpenStreetMaps; they mainly display information such as streets, hotels, restaurants, banks, bus stops and schools among many others. Some common applications of web maps include: delivery services such as food delivery services, taxi services such as Uber maps, tracking services such as vehicle tracking, defence such as the military. For this project a user needs assessment was done using a questionnaire to determine the relevant datasets used in civil engineering applications in Kenya. The design technologies applied to this web map consisted of a triad of web design languages; they are: HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Web optimization technologies were used to create a more user friendly and cost effective web map that utilizes network and computational resources efficiently, they included AJAX, image tiling, image compression and image file formatting. The result was a web map that displayed data on topography, land parcels, administrative boundaries, forestry, rivers and man-made structures such as roads and railways. The web map was hosted on a website with the URI www.beampositioningsystems.com. Key words: World Wide Web, web mapping application, civil engineering, spatial, GIS, data, information, Kenya.