HIGHWAY ROUTE ALIGNMENT USING GIS

Abstract

In recent years, it has been established thai,t the use of computerised spatial databases is an effective and economic method in planning and management of Engineering projects. The technological umbrella that captures, organises and uses spatial data utilising a computer is generally referred to as Geographic Information System (GIS). The process of evaluating increasing volumes of information acquired from different sources lead to its development' and use. For obtaining an optimum highway route alignment, various types of data are required to be considered simultaneously. It is difficult to handle manually a large amount of data of varied nature simultaneously. It has been proved that GIS can be succesfully employed for such types of problems. Applications of GIS in highway route alignment is relatively a new technology. In the present study, an attempt has been made to use GIS in highway route alignment. For this, an area of about 257.9 sq km was considered between Roorkee and Haridwar and a route has been marked on land use map of the area using GROUTES algorithm. The route is optimum in terms of cost, length and connectivity. The study has shown that the use of GIS is a cost effective and time effective tool for a highway route alignment.