Enhancing road monitoring and safety through the use of geospatial technology

Abstract

The geographic information system (GIS) and the global positioning system (GPS) are the 2 geospatial technologies that are being used in monitoring of transportation generally. Transportation is a requirement for every nation regardless of its industrial capacity, political stability, population, size or technological development. Moving goods and people from one place to another is crucial to maintaining strong economic and political ties between the various components of any given nation and among nations. How that movement takes place can be unique to location and technological development, but the most reliable and widely embraced means of transportation is road. Road transportation is the most widely used means of transportation in all countries generally and Nigeria in particular due to its affordability. Because of its contribution to national growth, various measures and devices had been and are being developed to enhance its continuity, sustainability and safety. Geo spatial technology is an electronic system for capturing, storing, retrieval, analyzing and displaying data related to positions on the earth. In this paper, geospatial technologies were used to generate a digital map of Nigeria roads to ensure easy location of vehicles and incidents on these roads. Key words: Transportation, GIS, geo spatial, highway, geodetic data.