Goals/Purpose

The Highways GIS Web Portal has been designed to provide easy access to highways and related information through an intelligent map interface. The initial information contained on the website is useful primarily for network level analysis or planning purposes; however, the intention is to maintain and upgrade the website to incorporate new features such as ROW videolog imagery, CADD drawings, aerial photography, queries, and reports, as they become available and/or needed.

The website was designed to be accessible to everyone who has a PC connected to the internal DOTNET network. No specialized software is required to view the website. Users can view any area in the state, and quickly access highways information such as traffic, road inventory items, bridges, county highways, pavement ranking or project information.

Framework

The website applications build on the data repository for the Roadway Information System (RIS). The web-based intelligent map environment expands upon the original RIS capabilities and exhibits the following features:

  • Integration of any internal electronic information (Highways) –Sources of data include: HWY-P, HWY-DB, HWY-DD, HWY-L, HWY-R (see below).
  • Integration of external information (i.e. environmental, land boundaries, other transportation facilities) – Sources of data include: DBEDT, City and County of Honolulu, USGS, Census, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, GDSI parcels, SPOT satellite imagery.
  • Use of multiple formats – Many different vendor and product formats can be used as is without the need for translation (translation on-the-fly is built into the web application). Formats accommodated include: Microstation, Oracle Spatial, ArcInfo, ArcView, MS Access, MS Excel, GeoMedia and MGE.
  • Temporal comparisons – A substantial amount of information contains date and time data. The website allows for simultaneous comparison of this information. For example, the website allows comparison of the annual average daily traffic on facilities across a span of several years.
  • Spatial statistics – The software includes capabilities to summarize or aggregate information by various areas or land boundaries. For example, the mileage of roads in a Census Tract, Legislative District or within an individually defined boundary (i.e. circle or polygon).

Background

This section describes how the Highways GIS Portal displays various data on the highway network. The fundamental concept behind the portal is the use of Linear Referencing. Linear Referencing is simply the tracking and analysis of data that is associated with locations along a linear network. Examples at Highways include tracking the location of and type of guardrails, the condition of pavement, and the location and identity of call boxes. Detailed information is available in the document:Working with GeoMedia Transportation Manager.

The biggest uses of linear referencing are Asset Tracking and Asset Analysis. Asset Tracking primarily encompasses the following four items:

  • What, where, and when of the assets (for example, a pothole at milepoint 41.7 along Route 11, reported June 6th, 2002)
  • Asset conditions (for example, a stretch of pavement with rutting and cracking)
  • Incidents along the network (for example, a maintenance activity)
  • Activities along the network (for example, construction projects)

Asset Analysis includes such activities as “hot-spotting” (finding areas with an unusual density of a given type of problem) and cross-discipline analysis (for example, cross analyzing areas that have both increasing traffic and deteorating pavement). This type of analysis can be important for any number of areas, including the following:

  • Optimizing usage of the assets (for example, locating areas with both high volume and low number of lanes in order to identify areas of congestion)
  • Optimizing budget usage (for example, locating the areas with the most traffic and the worst pavement conditions to be first priority for resurfacing)