Using Remote Sensing, Image Processing and GIS Techniques for Transportation Infrastructure and Environmental Capital Asset Management

Abstract

While there is general knowledge about how transportation affects the environment in urban and rural areas, remote sensing, image processing and GIS technologies provide new opportunities for incorporating environmental factors in infrastructure asset management, such as the extent of erosion, wetland displacement and destruction, runoff discharge, loss of tree cover, and residential and business dislocation. These technologies can be used to develop data for strategic monitoring and analysis of the impacts of various civil infrastructure development alternatives on the environment. This paper discusses the combined use of remote sensing, image processing and GIS techniques for infrastructure and environmental capital asset management. The authors discuss important considerations for developing RS/GIS databases and analytic approaches, to enhance existing decision support systems, and present examples of the types of analysis that could be performed to integrate transportation infrastructure and environmental asset management. Integrated infrastructure and environmental capital asset management will address the inevitable interactions that occur between the built, natural and social environments, and aim to use the acquired knowledge for identifying better alternatives for civil infrastructure development.