Chad Tinsley 10/23/2013 Geog 897D: Spatial Database Management Final Project: ODOT Highway Restoration Project Overview:

The task at hand it to develop a spatial database that will serve back-end project managers and construction crews in the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) Highway Restoration project. ODOT intends to utilize volunteered geographic information (VGI) from mobile trip applications of repairable damages including potholes, ripples, cracks, median damage, debris, landslide, or structural damage. The database will be used to analyze damage information and urgency, manage construction crew information, partition crew assignment districts, and prioritize and efficiently assign construction crews to damaged areas. This database and hypothetical VGI mobile interface will solve the existing problem of how to effectively convey highway damage to authorities and how to efficiently organize restoration assignments for construction crews. This project would utilize a Postgres/PostGIS approach to database management utilizing point shapefile information from VGI highway damage feedback.

Mobile Application (Front End) - VGI Highway Damage Feedback: The proposed mobile application is similar to one that is currently featured on the Google Maps Application. While on a trip, any significant pothole or otherwise damaged roadway shakes the mobile devise and brings up the first interface (far left). You can chose not to report feedback if it is a mistake, but if the user selects "Yes" to report the feedback they will then be redirected to the second interface. The type of road damage observed, and whether the damage needs to be attended to urgently, can be submitted. This adds a point to the current GPS location of the mobile device user, which is then added to the server hosted damage shapefile. The new point in the shapefile is then uploaded to the damage table in the ODOT Highway Restoration PostgreSQL/PostGIS database.
Mockup of mobile application for VGI Damage Feedback Credit Balsamiq Mockup Software for Image

ESRI Geodatabase Specs: The database is designed to store all of the tables necessary highway restoration project information queries and spatial analysis under the "odot" schema.

Figure 2: odot schema table information

Table Name highway damage maint_crew odot_district

Description Polylines Shapefile of odot managed highways Points Shapefile of damage feedback from collection crews Info table of maintenance crew information Polygon Shapefile of maintenance assignment areas*

*For the purposes of this hypothetical project, Oregon counties will be used as the ODOT maintenance districts. The ODOT maintenance districts shapefile is only available as a PDF map.

Figure 3: Entity Relationship Diagram for the ODOT Highway Restoration Postgres/PostGIS database.

Problems/Question Solving with Database Queries: List all of the potential maintenance contacts and their associated district for N Hwy 101, being that it likely spans multiple districts. SELECT DISTINCT (last, first) AS Contact, odot_district.name AS District FROM maint_crew JOIN odot_district ON maint_crew.district_id = odot_district.district_id CROSS JOIN highway WHERE highway.name = 'N Hwy 101' AND ST_Intersects(highway.geom, odot_district.geom);

What damages are in the Grant district and are they urgent? SELECT odot_district.name, damage.type, damage.urgent FROM damage CROSS JOIN odot_district WHERE ST_Covers(odot_district.geom, damage.geom) AND odot_district.name='Grant';

What damages are on N Santiam Hwy? SELECT damage.gid, damage.type, damage.geom, highway.name FROM damage CROSS JOIN highway WHERE highway.name = 'State Hwy 53' AND ST_Intersects(damage.geom, highway.geom);

Create a view of all of the urgent restoration damages with the district and maintenance contact name for each associated in the shapefile. SELECT DISTINCT maint_crew.last, maint_crew.first, damage.gid, odot_district.name, damage.type, damage.geom FROM odot.damage CROSS JOIN odot.odot_district JOIN odot.maint_crew ON maint_crew.district_id = odot_district.district_id WHERE damage.urgent = 'yes' AND ST_Within(damage.geom,odot_district.geom) ORDER BY damage.gid;

Create a view of all the potholes on record in Oregon and sort by District. SELECT DISTINCT damage.gid, odot_district.name, damage.type, damage.geom FROM odot.damage CROSS JOIN odot.odot_district JOIN odot.maint_crew ON maint_crew.district_id = odot_district.district_id WHERE damage.type= 'pothole' AND ST_Within(damage.geom,odot_district.geom) ORDER BY odot_district.name;

Summary: The Postgres/PostGIS ODOT Restoration Project database allows the database administrator or other authorized users to link between tables to generate useful information. It is possible to gather tabular data, like pulling contact information of maintenance crews for a single damage point. One can analyze the spatial data using queries to generate useful maps like those above. The ability to automatically sort through a huge list of damage data to find only the ones requiring urgent restoration on a particular

highway or in a particular district is extremely useful. The database is an efficient way to organize the back-end of a highway restoration project and assess continuous incoming feedback from mobile devises. The use of Postgres/PostGIS was used in conjunction with QGIS Desktop as a completely open source project.