Improvement of Transportation Network of Al-Muwaffaqiyah Town Using GIS

Abstract

Al-Muwaffaqiyah Town lies in Wasit Governorate southeast of Baghdad City. This town is divided into two sides by the Al Gharraf River. The needing to travel between these two sides creates traffic concentration on the one existing bridge. Therefore, the construction of another bridge can help to improve the transportation network of this town. The transportation planning process (find the best route) can be considered a strategic, important, and complex issue at the same time, due to collecting information and analyzing data to reach the optimum network (journeys of shortest routes) in order to save time, to reduce cost, fuel, noise, and air pollution. By using GIS, the network can be analyzed, and found the optimum route based on the shortest travel time between the origin and destination of the journey by using the software’s algorithm. Moreover, the ability of GIS to generate detailed directions along the route, providing as-you-need-it solutions for common problems. An application of the GIS tool can help to solve this problem. So Al-Muwaffaqiyah town is divided into 13 Traffic Analysis Zones (TAZ). The center of each zone is obtained in order to compute the shortest time between every two zones. The GIS algorithm divides the network into nodes (where lines join, start, or end) and the paths between such nodes are represented by lines. In addition, each line has an associated cost representing the cost (length or time) of each line in order to reach a node...