GIS application in assisting road bypass design and planning

Abstract

New road construction either to improve existing roads or as bypass of a congested town is among the current development projects that are being given serious attention by the Malaysian Ministry of Works (KKR) in order to provide a better transportation services to the public. Such projects certainly require a careful and thorough planning to ensure its implementation really solves or at least minimizes the traffic problems and of course with the least cost. Therefore accurate and up-to-date information is vital in supporting the planning and design team in coming up with their proposed possible routes until the final one is selected. Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) has secured a project from the Malaysian Highway Planning Unit (HPU), a section under KKR, to carry out an aerial mapping and ground survey works in providing geospatial information required for route selection and design. This paper elaborates on the experience of carrying out the project, with a particular focus on producing an orthophoto map and applying GIS in integrating it with other vector datasets (that come from ground survey, GPS and existing digital maps and plans) to produce the final freezing zone plan of the property lots that are potentially intersected by the proposed bypass.