A WEBGIS APPLICATION FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF THE ETHIOPIAN ROAD NETWORK SYSTEM

Abstract

A well maintained database system for the
Ethiopian roads network would play a significant
role in the road maintenance, traffic safety,
mobility management, environmental and socioeconomic
planning, etc. This paper addresses the
design and development of software system called
Ethiopian Roads Network Information System
(ERNIS). ERNIS is a web application which
incorporates geographical information (WebGIS)
that is used for gathering, updating and working
with the national roads network data for Ethiopia.
Using this system, road agencies and other
stakeholders can add new road data in the system,
update existing roads information, and investigate
the maintenance and other requirements of road
networks, etc. by remotely accessing the central
database through a web browser. Geographical
Information System (GIS) data of the roads’
physical location, the towns each pass through, the
rivers they cross, location of bridges on the road
and other geographical features accompany each
road segment data. The development of ERNIS
followed the model-view-controller (MVC)
framework and it was implemented using open
source components for the various parts of the
system. The system has been configured at the
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
and in the Office of the Road Fund. It was tested
and is found to be functional that requires
populating it by appropriate data, which would be
the next step.