The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) has embarked on the use of GIS mapping to centrally manage database for national highways. The project will facilitate timely repair of roads, maintenance, monitoring of road progress, timely completion of projects and detailed projects report.
Tasked with speeding up the highway construction to 50 km per day, the MoRTH has asked all its field units as well as state governments to complete the GIS-mapping process of the national entire highway network in a timely manner.
They have been told to leverage the data for mapping, already gathered by the Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Applications, for field verification exercise.
Though Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Applications and Geo-informatics (BISAG-N), Gandhinagar, Gujarat, have mapped approximately 130,000 km of national highways using GIS, this data now needs to be updated and verified by field units of different agencies for the ministry.
The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), the prime highway executing agency, has almost completed the projects allocated to it. It is expected that once other agencies also complete the task by next month, work on new highway alignments could be started at a faster pace.
An official at MoRTH said that GIS mapping of the entire network of highways is one of the most important requirements for planning, executing and monitoring of the network and the ministry is moving at rapid pace to involve all agencies and update and verify mapping work already done by Bisag.
How GIS aids agencies?
GIS provides agencies with tools for building resilient infrastructure, supports strategic repairs and upgrades existing networks, the official said. GIS maps contain detailed visual representation of any infrastructure facility, including location, topography, facilities and structures, and images.
As these maps can easily be assessed even through mobile phones and shared, it makes the construction process and finalization of highway networks easier.
The MoRTH has decided to upload the entire highway network on a single unified platform irrespective of the executing agency, be it NHAI, National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL), Border Roads Organization (BRO) or state governments, to avoid duplication.
