| dc.description.abstract | Roads play a very crucial role in the economic development of a nation. The sustenance of a road network is dependent on how well the maintenance is conducted. Maintenance of roads is organized from inventory of the network and assessment of the condition of roads and structures. GITs have increasingly been used to manage the inventory and condition assessment function of road maintenance. Since 2004, several donor agencies such as JICA, DANIDA, World Bank have financed the introduction and use of GITs in maintenance of roads in Uganda. In spite of the investments in excess of USD 5.2 million, there was no information on the extent to which the use of GITs had been adopted in the maintenance of district roads in Uganda.
This study therefore sought to assess the extent to which GITs have been adopted in the inventory and condition assessment of district roads and their structures. To do this, questionnaires were distributed to 71 district engineers and road works supervisors from 54 districts in Northern and Central Uganda. The results from these were triangulated with interviews with key informants. The questionnaires investigated their competences with use of GITs i.e. GPS, GIS, web-based applications and data sharing of roads inventory and condition assessment. The competences sought from the questionnaires included their ability to use GPS technology to collect data of roads and structures inventory and condition, use of GIS to process data into maps and use of web based applications to share this information. Having identified these competences, the Principal Factor Analysis (PFA) was used to identify the major factors that affect the use of GITs in managing maintenance of district roads in Uganda. The output from the PFA was then used to design a conceptual framework to accentuate the use of GITs in managing district roads in Uganda.
From the results, 28% of the District Engineers and Road Works Supervisors had adopted use of GITs to prepare and share using web based tools the inventory maps of District roads. 37% of the respondents were able to share condition maps of roads and their structures. 15% were able to produce thematic GIS layers for viewing in Google Earth and 18% were able to geo-tag and export photos to KML format for Goggle Earth. 38% of the respondents were able to prepare and print hard copy maps of thematic layers. From the results, it is evident that in spite of the heavy financial investment, there is low adoption of GITs in managing district roads in Uganda. This can be improved through a more detailed assessment of the competences of the managers, stratifying their competences and having more targeted capacity training, preferably by a centralized support unit. One of the challenges of these previous projects was that there was no continuity between the different training programs, hence each program necessitated new training, instead of building on previous competences. There is also need for increased technical support in terms of provision of hardware such as GPS sets, computers, printers and continuously providing appropriate and up-to-date software. There is also need for increased provision of access to internet services, steady power supply, provision of improved remuneration to District roads managers, harmonizing policies on use of GITs in Uganda, increased funding for integration of GITs in Uganda’s local government and availing manuals to all Districts.
The study recommends that in spite of the low adoption, these efforts should be sustained by improving the administrative policies such as commitment to use of GITs and harmonizing the GIT policies between MoWT, Road Fund and MoLG. Furthermore, at the operational level, there is need for integration of GITs in the planning and reporting systems, which will only be possible after the different manuals have been integrated. It is also recommended that this collected roads information is made accessible through a web-portal established by MoWT. Key to the implementation of these recommendations will be the quality of staff; hence this study recommends a centralized coordination of the CPD training of the Engineers and Works Supervisors. For further studies, the research recommends the investigation into the quality of the collected Geographical Information (GI) and how it can be standardised to be used in NSDI. v | en_US |
