ISLAMABAD - National Highway Authority is all set to utilise its recently evolved Geographical Information System (GIS) for eradication of encroachments, revenue enhancement and project planning. 

A state of the art control room is going to be made operational at NHA’s Headquarters in Islamabad to effectively run the programme in coming days. The Road Assets Management Directorate (RAMD) of NHA is mandated to operate the system.  According to General Manager RAMD Naseem Khattak the NHA through GIS system has completely digitised the national highways, motorways and strategic roads having total length of about thirteen thousand kilometres.  He said the GIS provides inventory and spatial information of all assets, limits of Right of Way (ROW) and roadside land and amenities. 

The digitisation process was carried out through differential GPS field surveys for which a consortium of consultancy firms was hired. The digitisation process commenced in June 2019 and completed in a period of 24 months.  NHA provides vital communication links between major populated cities, industrial zones and trade centres in addition to facilitating cross-border transit trade traffic.  NHA have to manage a broad spectrum of distributed information related to road corridor in multiple systems. GIS provides an advance and powerful mechanism to efficiently manage and integrate the numerous types of information necessary for the planning, design, construction, analysis, operation, maintenance, and administration of transportation systems and facilities. 

GIS has enabled NHA to identify about 90,000 commercial amenities along ROW limits

The highway departments across the world are using GIS to achieve multiple benefits including assets inventory, digitisation, analysis and decision making. 

The developed GIS includes digitisation of ROW limits and all assets within ROW including carriageways, bridges, culverts, retaining walls, road safety furniture (e.g. sign broads, guard rails, gantries, pedestrian bridges, parapets etc), all roadside permanent/temporary structures established along ROW. 

The developed GIS will yield multifaceted benefits for NHA as an enabling tool for efficient asset management, effective decision making, revenue generation and continuous monitoring of ROW.  The system has helped NHA in identification of encroachments within ROW for removal and identification of amenities outside ROW to bring in the revenue net of NHA. 

GIS has enabled NHA to identify about ninety thousand commercial amenities along its ROW limits. NHA has now initiated the process of issuance of notices to identified commercial amenities to obtain NOC. The process will gradually yield significant enhancement of revenue and will lead to self-sustainability of the authority as per vision of the government of Pakistan. 

The geodatabase provides a complete repository of information not only related to assets and amenities along road corridor but also enables graphical interpretation of traffic density, flood damages, road condition, locations with high concentration of accidents, potential landslide’s hazardous locations and completed/ongoing/planned maintenance works. 

The geodatabase is accessible through Web GIS Interface by all NHA field officers through their designated login account. The NHA officers are comprehensively trained by the consultants to operate and update the developed GIS of their respective jurisdiction. 

For continuous updation of geodatabase in future, NHA has engaged Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) for a period of three years to provide high resolution Satellite/Aerial imageries, auto updation of GIS data through Geo Spatial Temporal Analysis and progress monitoring of construction projects through remote sensing. 

NHA has also started to utilise the GIS to develop Digital Elevation Model, Cut and Fill Analysis, Land Cover Assessment and Optimum route planning for new construction projects.