NH asset management system launched

Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari on Friday launched a new programme Road Measurement and Data Acquisition System to take stock of the condition of the national highways (NH) including their maintenance.

As per the scheme, a vehicle equipped with modern gadgets including GPS, advanced lasers, cameras will cover every aspect of the road including road condition, wayside amenities, accident-prone zones, road strength, condition of bridges and culverts besides encroachment.

All these data will be fed into a system and it will be managed through a web-based application, which will be hosted in the public domain.

Apart from users to understand the road’s condition through browsing, it will also benefit the governments and other agencies to prioritise for taking up maintenance, upgrading and expansion of certain stretches. The data will help for preparation of detailed project report for upgrading roads, Gadkari said.

The project is funded by the World Bank and National Highway Authority of India (NHAI). 

The first phase of data collection commenced from Nagpur on May 5 and it will cover 3,000 km of national highways spreading across Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Pubjab, Gujarat and Rajasthan and it will be completed by September 2015.