Journal of Remote Sensing & GIS Research Article

GIS Web Services for Road Management System in Tigrai, Mekelle

Kidu Gebremedhin1*, Desta Luel2
1Department of Geoinformatics, Institute of Geo-Information and Earth Observation Sciences (I-GEOS), Mekelle University, Mekelle,
Ethiopia
2 Institute of Pedagogical Science, Mekelle University, Mekelle, Ethiopia

ABSTRACT
The development of road transport is one of the key features to an overall better standard of living; it is currently the
heart of regional connectivity for the continents of Africa. Road management covers the activities of planning,
designing, implementing, and decision makings for road development programs. In Tigrai, Ethiopia, road
management is still managed in a poorly organized way, leading to data slow decision making processes. There are
issues of data redundancy, inconsistency and incompleteness, no use of spatial technologies for spatial information as
such, long processing time and inaccurate information is implemented. The objective of this study was to explore the
role of new and emerging Geographic information System (GIS) technologies, explicitly Service Oriented
Architecture (SOA) web services for road management and thereby supports the planning and management functions
of the The research started by assessing the status of current road management and planning activities using
questionnaires, interviews, observation and consulting existing documents. The study then reviewed the current
trends of SOA web services for effective road management and planning. System design which includes use case,
activity diagrams were modeled using Unified Modeling Language (UML) and creation of shape files for map files
were done. Next, the SOA web service prototype was developed using map server with p-mapper scripts. Various
queries using map server scripts were developed and tested. Results were used as a baseline in order to develop the
system that can be implemented in reality. This study showed how such a system can be developed with low-cost
available technologies. The method can be adopted to develop road management and planning in other cities of the
country. The prototype is simple to use and facilitates searching roads’ information in space and time supported by
interactive analytical tools.
Keywords: Web Services; Service Oriented Architecture (SOA); MeRA

INTRODUCTION This information can be used as a guidance for decision makers

to make decisions as it is used as spatial decision support systems
Currently roads are the heart of regional connectivity for the (SDSS). SOA web services provides an integrated system for
continent especially in Africa. Roads are major components of spatial and non-spatial roads’ information in order to retrieve,
urban infrastructures that constitute the main infrastructure select, query and generate reports of road information on web
serving to regional connectivity, carrying majority goods and [2, 3]. Web services with the provided by the GIS, merges for a
passengers in day to day activities. However, it is characterized by model for visualization, management, and analysis of geographic
missing links and poor road maintenance managements [1]. information, as a valid and effective tool for public
Web services in road management is an important tool to get the administrators to aid in decision making in management and
accurate information from relevant bodies in space and time. planning of the regional entity[4].

Correspondence to: Kidu Gebremedhin, Department of Geoinformatics, Institute of Geo-Information and Earth Observation Sciences (I-GEOS),
Mekelle University, Mekelle, Ethiopia, Tel: 251963488728; E-mail: [email protected]
Received: September 03, 2020; Accepted: August 30, 2021; Published: September 09, 2021
Citation: Gebremedhin K (2021) GIS Web Services for Road Management System in Tigrai, Mekelle. J Remote Sens GIS 10: p222
Copyright: © Gebremedhin K. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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Gebremedhin K

In this study, the researcher has envisioned to underline SOA Service Orientation is the result of the natural evolution of
web services that will serve as a platform for road management current development models such as structural, object oriented
and planning in Mekelle Road Authority. The current Road and component based methods. Object-oriented models were
management and planning system in Mekelle, it is lacking the used in the 1980s; and then they were replaced by the
required functionalities of a modern road management and component-based development models in the 1990s. And now
planning system; data requirement definitions, data collection we have service orientation. Service orientation retains the
methods, data organization and storage mechanism, software benefits of component-based development (self-description,
platform, data analysis techniques, data update and encapsulation, dynamic discovery and loading), but there is a
maintenance, data production techniques, data searching shift in paradigm from remotely invoking methods on objects,
techniques, standards and data exchange as well as data access to passing messages between services [8].
techniques. SOA comprises a flexible set of design principles
Service Oriented Architecture is an architecture used in software
used during the phases of system development and integration.
development based on the concept of Service. A service can be
The deployment of a SOA based architecture will provide a
defined as an independent function which is well defined and
loosely integrated suite of services that can be used within
self-contained. In SOA, different services communicate with
multiple areas of domains. The enabling technologies in SOA
each other to perform some activity. SOA is a very popular
allows services to be discovered, composed, and executed. For
architecture paradigm for designing and developing distributed
instance, when an end-user wishes to accomplish a certain task,
systems. SOA solutions have been created to satisfy business
a service can be employed to discover the required resources for
goals that include easy and flexible integration with legacy
the task. This will be followed by a composition service which
systems, streamlined business processes, reduced costs,
will plan the road-map to provide the desired functionality and
innovative service to customers, and agile adaptation and
quality of service to the end-users [5, 6].
reaction to opportunities and competitive threats of SOA. A
service is a unit of work done by a service provider to achieve
Architecture of Service Oriented Architecture desired end results for a service consumer. Both provider and
(SOA) consumer are roles played by software agents on behalf of their
SOA approach applies within the GIS domain where several owners. The key component in the SOA is services. A service is
standards have been launched. This technology moves from well defined set of actions. It is self-contained, stateless, and
standalone GIS applications towards a more loosely coupled and does not depend on the state of other services [8-11].
distributed model based on self-contained, specialized, and Figure 1: The Basic Components & Operations of SOA.
interoperable geospatial web services. In order to create SOA
architecture for the GIS services it is necessary to create web
service correspondences of each GIS services. GIS services can
be grouped into three categories- data services, processing
services and registry services [7].
Data Services- are tightly coupled with specific data sets and
offer access to customized portions of that data. Web Feature
Service (WFS), Web Feature Service-Transactional (WFS-T),
Web Mapping Service (WMS) and Web Coverage Service
(WCS) can be considered in this group. WMS produces maps as
two-dimensional visual portrayals of geospatial data. WCS SOA concept has three components (Fig.1): service provider,
provides access to un-rendered geospatial information (raster service registry, service requester and three operations: publish,
data). WFS provides geospatial feature data (vector data) find, and bind. A SOA relates the roles of the three components
encoded in Geography Markup Language (GML) whereas WFS- with the three operations to maintain automated discovery and
T enables editing feature coordinate geometry (i.e. position and the use of services. The three essential components mentioned
shape) and related descriptive information (i.e. attribute values), above can be described as:
as well.
Service provider (server) - publishes services to a registry and
Processing Services- provide operations for processing or makes it available on the Internet for the requests of the
transforming data in a manner determined by user-specific consumers.
parameters. They provide generic processing functions such as
projection and coordinate conversion, rasterization and Service requester (client) - performs service discovery operations
vectorization. Coverage Portrayal Service (CPS) and Coordinate on the service registry in order to find the needed service; then
Transformation Service (CTS) can be considered in this group. accesses services.
Registry or Catalog Service- allows users and applications to Service registry (broker) - helps service providers and service
classify, register, describe, search, maintain, and access requesters to find each other by acting as a registry of the
information about Web Services. Web Registry Service (WRS) services.
and Catalog Service for the Web (CS-W) are considered in this Web Services: are functional components or application
group. programming interface that can be accessed through internet

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and SOA can be implemented at many different network road management is incomplete and not well maintained in
environments. The implementation of SOA in web environment database system so; it is difficult to get reliable roads
is called Web Services. The concept of Web services is based on information. The second problem is that it is difficult to access
service oriented architecture paradigm where a complete roads’ information such as type and status of roads in space and
application can be constructed from various services which time as the maps are static. The third problem is that static maps
provide different functionalities. Web services are designed to be cannot be interacted with; planners cannot change the scale of a
published as far as possible like web sites. Web services are self- map; select an area of interest, identify sever roads, etc. Due to
contained, self-describing, modular new raise of web these problems, activities are not organized and prioritized to
applications that can be published, located, and dynamically serve systematically. As shown in the Fig. 2, we collected through
invoked across the web. field survey in Mekelle, there are many damaged asphalt and
cobblestone roads which needs immediate maintenance but the
Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) - Messaging protocol - is
Mekelle Road Authority takes long processing time to make
responsible for encoding messages in a common XML format so
road planning and management decisions.
that they can be understood at either end of a network
connection. Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is the Figure 2: Damaged asphalt roads in Mekelle main road (Field
specific format for exchanging Web services data over HTTP. work 2020).
Web Service Description Language (WSDL) - Description
Protocol- it is an XML format used for describing the public
interface to a specific web service. Web Service Definition
Language(WSDL) is used to describe what type of message a web
service accepts and generates. It gives the answers to the
questions who? What? Where? Why? How? When?
Universal Description Discovery and Integration (UDDI) – Some of the key management questions are to search roads
Discovery protocol- is the core and open registry standard for constructed at a particular time, to search specific type of roads,
web services or centralizes services into a common registry. searching damaged roads for maintenance, identifying the status
UDDI specification can be used by the service providers to of roads, length of roads, year of construction, and to update
advertise the existence of their services and by requesters to road information etc. As such, the current system is not
search and discover already registered services. supported by web services and this negatively affects the
HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) – Transport Protocol- is activities of relevant authorities.
responsible for transporting messages between network
applications. HTTP is the low-level protocol used by the Internet Description of study area
for the transport layer. Mekelle was established in 1872 E.C when Yohannes IV ruled
SOA web services can facilitate the road management system his empire. Currently the is the seat of the regional government
activities, which optimizes performance functionality, of Tigrai. Mekelle is located at about 783 km. North of Addis
performance measurement, management costs, information Ababa on the main highway that continues Northward through
flow, interoperability and reusability, organizational flexibility, Adigrat and Axum and it occupies an area of 100 sq. km. The
software development, data confidentiality and integrity, City is located 390 28' East and 13032' North coordinates. Its
reliability and ability to develop new functions rapidly [12]. altitude ranges from 2150-2300 m.a.s.l, which belongs to Dega
(Medium high land) climatic zone. The average temperature of
Road management system in Mekelle activities comprise Mekelle is 19oc.
planning, designing, constructing, maintenance and other road
related issues. Mekelle Road Authority is responsible to perform Figure 3: Map of the study area.
these activities. The activities of the Authority is lacking of
searching road information in space and time. Hence, we aimed
to design and develop SOA web services that will serve as a
platform for road management and planning in Mekelle Road
Authority.

Road Management in Mekelle Road

Authority(MeRA)
As mentioned, in the above section, data and information in
Mekelle road management, and activities are scattered in
different departments and sections. There is no efficiently
maintained data management system that supports road
management and planning activities. Problems arise when
planners of roads want to access and possibly query roads
information. The first problem is that the spatial data related to

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Gebremedhin K

MATERIALS AND METHODS participants of the top managers responded appropriate answers.
The collected data is analyzed and interpreted in tables, charts
This section has two parts. The first section is the assessment of and percentages using MS Excel software.
road management system in Mekelle. Here target populations,
sample and sampling techniques, data collection methods and Design and Implementation
data analysis method were included. The second section is
focused on design, development and implantation of GIS web Design procedures :First, assess and identify appropriate data
services. for roads from the current Road Management and planning
system of Mekelle Road Authority was performed. Data and
Assessment of road management Information acquisition was conducted through questionnaires,
interviews or investigation of existing documents and
Target population: The target population for this study was the observations. This helped to identify the status of the existing
community of Mekelle Road Authority and top managers and system and needs and requirements for the new system to be
technical workers of Mekelle Road Authority were the developed. Next, the effectiveness of a SOA approach for such a
participants for the study (Fig.4). purpose was investigated by using literatures review. More
Figure 4: Departments and Sections of Mekelle Road Authority. specifically, the focus was put on understanding how SOA
approach can be used for effective road management and
planning in terms of information searching, updating,
visualizing. After that, a design of use case diagrams and activity
diagrams using UML was created. A use cases diagram was used
to the show the essential requirements for the new services. The
use case is elaborated based on the activity diagram to show the
service interaction as a result conceptual schema was developed
[14-17]. Moreover, creation of geodatabase (shape-files)
Sampling and sample determination: Purposive sampling preprocessing and digitization via QGIS 2.18 tools was done.
method was used to collect the required information because Development and implementation: Based on the design of web
the overall purpose of sampling was designed to generate a service above, we develop a graphical user interface prototype to
sample that will address research questions and the sample size show how interactive analytical tools of web services facilitate
was typically small thirty [13]. Questionnaires were distributed to the processing activities of road management and planning in
a total of 24 participants; nine (9) in Constructions & Mekelle Road Authority. A user interface using open sources
Maintenance, seven (7) in Design & Contract and eight (8) in tools was developed accordingly. We implemented the prototype
Planning Departments. Another questionnaire was distributed and checked the query testing for roads information such as
to three (3) top managers of each department. searching asphalt roads where it status is sever, searching
cobblestone roads constructed in 2018.
Data collection techniques
Functional Requirement: Determining user requirements is one
Primary data sources: Primary data were gathered through of the basic and fundamental components of GIS design for
questionnaires, interviews and observation. Questionnaires were each development and each user. The potential targeted users of
distributed to the Departments of Constructions and this SOA web services for Mekelle road management and
Maintenance, Design and Contract, Planning Departments and planning in Mekelle Road Authority including data managers,
top managers of each department. Interviews were conducted top managers and infrastructure management developers (IT
with the three top managers of each department formally and groups), from Mekelle Municipality, Regional Head Office.
with some data managers/technical workers in each Department Various academic and governmental agencies can also be
informally to support the result of questionnaires. granted access to the services. The required functions are: the
Secondary data sources: The secondary data were collected service allows visualization the roadmaps: 1) A service allows
through the existing documents. Besides, the existing system was searching specific data 2) A system that allows retrieving of
observed information about the current practice, data specific information based on some criteria, 3) A web service
management and retrieval or data searching systems. Existing allows selecting, measuring and identifying data.
and accessible documents were also consulted: such as repots, System Components and Architecture: The Mekelle Road
action plans, posters and static map. The most recent shape files Authority (MeRA) has several components to accomplish its
of roads from Mekelle Municipality were obtained. main aims using SOA Web services efficiently. These
Data analysis methods: According to the plan, data were components are: searching services, manipulating service,
collected through data gathering methods listed in the above retrieval service, selecting services, and querying, printing and
and 92.67 % of the total participants in all departments of data measuring services. The general architecture of the service is
managers except Planning Department responded complete based on the SOA approach.
answers. In the Planning Department participants answered Figure 5: System Architecture with its components.
only six questions from eight; total of twenty two participants of
the data managers responded with complete answers. And three

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Where is the greatest sever of asphalt roads in Mekelle sub city?

What is the name of a road with a given street cod?
What is the length of the road with a certain starting and
ending points of the roads?
Where are cobblestone roads where its status is good?
Which roads are constructed in a certain functional year?

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Assessment Results and discussion
User interface- allows and controls user system interaction. The This section is principally categorized based on the predefined
recommendation service obtains information about users’ need research objectives and questions. The important findings are
via SOA Web services user interface. directly linked to the problem of road management and
Business process- is the main component of the system which planning in Mekelle Road Authority. Data were collected,
controls the overall interaction to provide analytical tools using analyzed and interpreted.
Service oriented Architecture (SOA) approach in order to Type of data or information handled in Mekelle Road Authority
facilitate Road Management and planning activities. It
comprises different services such as searching, retrieval services Responses of all Departments or Sections of Mekelle Road
or spatial queries, map services and updating services. Authority (MeRA) the data and information handled in their
office. Q1. What type of available data at MeRA office?
Spatial Database- is the data model recommendation system
which store users’ information and spatial road data in a Figure 6: Responses given by staffs for the data kept in MeRA
structured form. It allows automatic and active retrieval, office.
updating and visualization of road data to support the
infrastructure managements.
User Interface in Mekelle Road Authority for Management and
Planning
The actual implementation process of the prototype was
presented based on the designed geodatabase and user
requirements listed above (Fig.5). The University of Minnesota’s
Map Server is an open-source and freely available map rendering
engine for the web services. Due to its open-source nature, it can Majority (88.9%) of the total respondents from Construction
be compiled on a wide variety of platforms and operating and Maintenance Department answered that the data or
systems. Map server is using Fast CGI via Apache/mod_fcgi. information their office comprises planned roads for
This is a CGI executable, meant to be called and run by your maintenance, planned roads for construction, and machinery
web server. Map-Server is a popular Open Source project whose data as well as inventory roads for maintenance. All the total
purpose is to display dynamic spatial maps over the Internet. In participants from the Planning Department responded that the
its most basic form of Map Server is a CGI program that sits data or information handled in the Office consists asset
inactive on your Web server. When a request is sent to Map management plan, work procurement plan and goods
Server, it uses information passed in the request URL and the procurement plan. Majority (75%) of the respondents from
Map file to create an image of the requested map. The request Contract and Design Department answered that the data or
may also return images for legends, scale bars, reference maps, information conveyed in the Office of Mekelle Road Authority
and values passed as CGI variables. The user interface for contains designed roads for construction, roads’ information,
Mekelle road management and planning was developed using and bill quantity and price specification (Fig. 6).
Map Server. P-mapper framework was used to implement the
system because of the providing the above functionalities [18, Therefore, the findings explore that the data or information
19]. handled in Mekelle Road Authority are existing roads in terms
of their road types, road status, street-codes, road names, and
Basic Queries for Mekelle Road Management and Planning in road length; planned roads for contraction; and planned roads
MeRA for maintenance.
There are basic queries we constructed based on the demands of Software used in Mekelle Road Authority (MeRA) for
Mekelle Road Authority. The researcher also discussed about management and planning
these queries with some data managers or technical workers of
the office. Some of the basic questions that answered by the new
developed prototype includes:

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The Departments of the MeRA including top level managers Results suggest that MS office is used by most of the data
responded for the software used for handling or storing their managers and top managers of the office to handle the roads
activities in their office. information, generate reports of roads and prepare designs for
the surveyed road data proposed for maintenance and
Table 3: Data handling mechanism for road management and
constructions (e.g. to produce paper map). Some technical
planning.
mangers in the Planning Department used Auto CAD to draw/
No Question Responses
mark using colored line symbols in order to identify where the
roads are maintained or constructed in existing road map which
Yes No was designed using Auto CAD software. This process is planned
to be used for the next five years. Technical workers in the
Q2 Do you handle 2(9.09%) 20(90.91%) Design and Contract as well as Maintenance and Construction
your data with a Departments rarely use Auto CAD software to measure length
database in and width of roads. From the above information we can
your conclude that, the Office of Road Infrastructure often use MS
department? Office software to process their activities. As a result, they are
limited in analyzing and visualizing their data, such as visualizing
Results represented that majority 20 (90.91%) of the total location of roads dynamically. This mentioned task is done in a
respondents in all departments answered no to the question very time consuming way and sometimes there is discrepancy
“Do you handle your data with a database in your department”, between actual measurement of certain values from surveyed
there is no database for handling and performing their tasks. data and those who used Auto CAD software to produce paper
2(9.09%) of the total respondents answered yes to the Q2. map.
This shows that Mekelle Road Authority (MeRA) has a very Table 4: GIS tools in Mekelle Road Authority.
limited use of database systems. As such, there is no efficiently
managed data or information of roads in the authority because No. Questions Yes No
there is poor data management system for data handling, for
that case, our investigation shows that data and information are Q4 Can Web 22(100%) 0(0%)
scattered in different departments or sections; as such there is services
facilitate the
data redundancy, inconsistency, integrity problems, and backup
activities of
and recovery problems. Therefore, Mekelle Road Authority road
(MeRA) as a whole has a problem to search, extract, visualize infrastructure
and update roads information. management
and planning?
The type of software used in Mekelle Road Authority (MeRA) to
process the activities
Q5 Do you have 22(100%) 0(0%)
Q3. What type of software is used to process the activities of GIS product
MeRA for planning and management aspects? maps that
indicates road
Figure 7: Type of software used in MeRA as responded by all features?
the Departments.
In questions four and five all the respondents in all
Departments replied positive answer, they believe that web
services can facilitate the processing activities roads and there is
a map for road features.
These results show that, although web services is believed to
facilitate the processing activities of road infrastructure
management and planning, the authority does not utilize it. As a
result, the Mekelle Road Authority is limited in using spatial
analysis of roads information both in space and time. They
As we can see in Fig. 7, 17 (77.27%) of the total respondents cannot for instance quickly search for specific data of roads,
responded that they use only MS Office software in particularly timely-update the road information when there is modification
MS Word and MS Excel to the question” What type of software and generate reliable, accurate and timely spatial information of
is used to process the activities of MeRA including planning and roads.
management aspects?” 5 (22.73%) of the total respondents
Q6: To what extent Web services can support Road
answered both Auto CAD and MS office to Q3. None of the
Management and planning processing activities?
total respondents in all Departments answered none, none of
them use GIS software to Q3, although they deal with spatial Figure 8: Extent of SOA Web services in facilitating
data. managements function.

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As we can observe in Fig. 9, 8(36.36%) participants from

Construction and Maintenance Department, 5(18.18%)
participants from Design and Contract Departments and same
5(18.18%) participants from planning answered greatly to the
question Q6. A total of 1(4.55%) respondents in all The user or planner can make a request for specific road
Departments answered greatly to the question “To what extent information using the query parameters from the feature class.
web services can support road management and planning Having searched, if it gets, it will draw the map and can print it
processing activities?” Only 1(4.55%) from Design and Contract unless it returns to the request section. Data managers request
Department answered not at all to Q6. roads information using query parameters. If he/she is success,
map will be displayed and he/she can measure length of roads
This result indicates that almost all respondents but one from
and print option also provided unless it returns to the request
the Design and Contract Department believed that web services
section.
can facilitate Road Management and planning functions very
greatly. They have confidence in that; GIS tool can support road
management and planning activities and allow access of spatial User Interface for MeRA Management and
analysis by using interactive analytical tools anywhere at any time planning
with Internet connection easily. Not at all is answered by one Figure 11: User Interface for the web service for Mekelle road
participant. The data mangers’ level of awareness for SOA web management and planning.
services to support road management and planning is almost
very high.

Results and discussion for the system development

web services
Use case diagram for Mekelle Road Management and Planning
Use cases focus on the system users, user actions and the system
processes that show an abstracted view of what the system can
do to a user [20]. When users or planners come to know what a
system should do for them, it demonstrates the interaction
between user and a system for MeRA, it is defined the actors
needed to use the system to meet the effective management of
road infrastructure functions.
Figure 9: Use case diagram for road management and planning We can open the system via three screen resolutions, small
system. resolution (740x520), medium resolution (860x600), large
resolution (980x700) and very large resolution (1024x768). Then
we can search the type of data we want display as spatially and
textually as integrated way.

Results of Basic Query Implementations for

Mekelle roads’ information
Below is some of the searching examples implemented queries
by for Mekelle roads’ information prototype in screenshots.
Question 1: Where are the roads whose status is severe with
length less than one?
Figure 11: Result for question one- status of roads with sever
status where its length is less than one.
Figure 10: activity diagram for searching services.

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CONCLUSION
There is no dedicated integrated system to handle data and
information in Mekelle Road Authority. As a result, data
redundancy, data inconsistency, data integrity problems, data
searching, data visualization, and backup and recovery are
common problems. 87.91% of the total respondents responded
that there is no database system to maintain and provide spatial
information for planning, managing and decision makings in
the Office.77.27 % of the total respondents replied that the type
of software often used is only MS Offices; it does not utilize any
This query displays the road type where its status is much GIS web services to process and manage spatial data. So, the
damaged or sever. The yellow color line features in the displayed office is limited in analyzing and visualizing spatial data such as
map show the result of the query and the table shows the result visualizing location of roads dynamically and searching
of the query that contains attribute information. (querying) roads’ information. Therefore, the current situation
Question 2: Where are the cobblestone roads where its status is of the Road Management and planning is suffering from long
good? processing time, less productivity, no support of spatial analysis,
searching problems, updating problems and it involves a lot of
Figure 12: Result for question two- cobblestone roads where its paper work. This contributes to slow decision makings in the
status is good. office. Here is a need for a SOA Web services which can help
organizing the data, provides timely information on road
infrastructure to be accessed, visualized and analyzed by road
infrastructure managers and other potential users.
The deliverables of this study is to develop the framework design
of road infrastructure management. Framework design is
important to data managers and planners of roads to know what
a system should do for them. It demonstrates the interaction
between the user and a system such as showing the capability to
search, retrieve, select, identify measure, and print road data. In
addition to this, due to well geodatabase design, there is no data
inconsistency, backup and recovery problems rather it can save
This query displays the cobblestone roads where it’s good. The time, effort, and cost of these processes. These were developed
yellow color line features in the displayed map show the result of using the UML, PostgreSQL, QGIS and ArcGIS technologies.
the query and the table shows the result of the query which
contains textual information. The SOA Web services prototype for Mekelle Road Authority to
facilitate the management and planning activities was developed
Question 3: Which roads are constructed before 1990 Ethiopian using Map Server technology; map sever that uses p-mapper can
functional year? facilitate easily portray of geographic data on web. The p-mapper
Figure 13: Result for question three- roads which were framework is intended to offer broad functionality and multiple
constructed before 1990 Ethiopian calendar. configurations in order to facilitate the setup of a Map Server
application based on PHP/Map Scripts. The new system is
simple to use and it facilitates searching road information in
space and time. In addition the interactive analytical tool
improves the Road Management and planning activities such as
measuring, identifying, printing, selecting road data timely.

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