Geographical Information System in Transportation Planning

To satisfy transport infrastructure requirement in a country in consonance to its developmental pace, decisions must be based on more reliable, update, relevant, easily accessible and affordable information. Geographic information system for transportation has now emerged as the technology with considerable potential for achieving dramatic gains in efficiency and productivity for multitude of traditional transportation applications. GIS application has relevance to the field of transportation engineering due to essentially spatially distributed nature of transportation related data, and the need for various types of network level analysis, statistical analysis and spatial analysis and manipulation. The paper thus reviews the suitability and applications of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology for managing the transport structure in the country.