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.