A review of the collection and dissemination of transport information was carried out in a county surveyor's department. The review was based on a detailed investigation of the collection, storage, processing and usage of data related to the road network. Highway authorities in local government are responsible for the construction, improvement and maintenance of roads to standards that are specified and that will permit a free flow of passengers and goods, and for planning transport provisions for the future. In discharging these responsibilities, extensive information is collected. The lack of a comprehensive scheme for data organisation often means that existing data are not used to best effect and that data are duplicated. The method of referencing data varies between applications, making it difficult to integrate information from different sources. Data collected for individual projects are incomplete when viewed departmentally. The advantages of a comprehensive highway network information system include the provision of a form of referencing which will enable correlation or integration of different data sets, improved access to data, automatic routeing capability, easier aggregation of data, extraction of sub-networks and improved data display. (Author/publisher)
Abstract