Towards a GIS-T database design and implementation for public transit planning: the case study of Dar-Es-salaam metropolitan city, Tanzania.

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies

In the last decade, we have witnessed tremendous advances and developments in the applications of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), in terms of technological hardware, software, methods, and data models. One of the applications that have attracted much attention in the use of GIS is the transportation sector mainly for planning, public transport routing, management and operations. This has made it important to have a unified or universal GIS-T standard data model, specifically, in the area of transportation applications. Several data models have been developed over the past 20 years, like the ArcInfo route system, National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Project 20-27, Federal Geographic Data Committee, Enterprise GIS-T data model and the UNETRANS data model to mention just few. This research project focused into the GIS-T database design and implementation for public transit planning and management in the Dar-es-Salaam City, and used part of the UNETRANS data model. As part of this research, the UNETRANS data model was thoroughly examined, and extracted useful elements useful for the geodatabase design of GIS-T for Dar-es-Salaam City. The outcome of the project is a designed GIS-T database model for Dar-es- Salaam and its prototype implementation in ArcGIS 9.3. In addition, an output of the network analysis for determining the closest bus stop to hospitals, shortest routes from an incident location as well as service are surrounding hospital facilities, and recommendations for future works are presented.