Department of Transport portal offers traffic information to the public
The Emirate of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates is one of the most modern and fastest-growing cities in the world. The Department of Transport (DOT) is the organisation responsible for delivering an effective transportation system that contributes to the economic growth, quality of life and environmental sustainability of the city. As part of Abu Dhabi 2030 vision, DOT needed to acquire, build and implement the best GIS technology possible. It realised that a robust GIS system was required to support the planning and daily operational and business needs of building, managing and maintaining a state-of-theart transportation network.
A project was conceived, which aimed to build a transportation data model, infrastructure and database for the GIS within DOT; use GIS data for planning, design, construction, operations and maintenance processes; build a public internet portal (DARB) to deliver various services such as driving directions and bus route information as well as build GeoTRANS, an enterprise-level intranet portal that would provide accurate and reliable geospatial information and services to various DOT sectors such as surface, aviation and maritime transportation.
Since its launch, the portal has been supporting and enhancing DOT’s daily business in terms of planning, network operation and public awareness of road works projects. The project is an excellent example of fasttrack implementation of a successful enterprise GIS for transportation in a place with the highest demands in terms of functionality and workflows due to the rapidly growing infrastructure. Some of the services provided by the GeoTRANS portal include:
Safety application: The application contains road safety data, including information about accident hot spots. This is used to support engineers in visual analysis of the accident data.
Parking application: This application provides users with information about parking locations and assets, both on and off-street, including the DOT-managed parking facilities.
Bus and taxi application: It offers rich information about existing bus routes and bus stops as well as taxi facilities. It allows users to analyse and manage data with respect to other activities in DOT and reflect the same on the public portal.
DARB : While GeoTRANS provided advanced tools and functionalities for DOT’s internal end users to access maps, tools and reports, the public portal DARB is the main gateway to share maps and services with citizens in the UAE, using a fast and simple, map-based interface. Services launched for the public include Car Travel, which helps users find driving directions and parking areas; Bus Travel, which helps users find bus routes; DARBI, which allows users to record incidents pertaining to road asset, parking, bus shelter, street lighting and road conditions. Users can click on a map and choose the type of incident to be reported, enter the required information and even upload photos.
