GIS provides significant benefits for civil engineering projects by allowing engineers to collect, analyze, and visualize large amounts of spatial data from various sources. GIS facilitates efficient and precise planning, environmental examination, design, construction, and project management. It enables civil engineers to perform tasks like site selection, transportation analysis, pollution analysis, and more by integrating data streams and conducting spatial analysis. Adopting GIS technology improves project processing for civil engineering companies by supporting activities from initial planning through final construction.
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Introduction
• Since the last decade, technology has moved up several notches for
various industry verticals. Man has created significant innovations in the
areas of communication, transportation, energy systems, engineering, and
more. Land has been deemed more valuable than gold, and thus, we have
seen a significant rise in the construction industry in the past few years.
• In this article, we would be talking about the applications of GIS in Civil
Engineering, but looking at the construction industry, every builder, owner,
architect, or construction professional is looking at new construction tools
and methodologies like Building Information Modeling(BIM), AR/VR,
Drones, Building Automation machines, GIS, and more.
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How valuable is GIS in Civil Engineering?
• The area of civil engineering is all about new developments, renovations,
and sustainable infrastructure developments. This is a broad range career,
and involves the integration of various software technology platforms.
Civil engineers need to work with huge amounts of data, this information
is collated from various sources and parties. GIS is cutting-edge technology
that provides a platform and the tools to create, manage, analyze, and
visualize large data volumes, and turn them into simplistic formats for
other people to view and communicate.
• Sustainable development through civil engineering companies needs
complete penetration of GIS for all its projects and developments.
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The question remains, why GIS?
• GIS has the power to flow and integrate its technology through complete
interoperability and multiple data formats. Through centralized
technology, GIS delivers construction companies and professionals to
perform spatial analysis, overlap data, and integrate various other systems
from other platforms and software.
• This enables civil engineers to create, manage, edit, share, and evaluate
various data streams for multiple project cycles.
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Some objectives & necessary components of GIS
– Maximize efficiency for planning and decision making
– Quantifying vital information from various data sources
– Conducting complex querying and analysis
– Reducing de-duplication
• Like other technology, even GIS has various components like – hardware,
software, data, procedures, and people. Hardware systems like scanners,
digitizers, plotters, and more interface with various software in the
industry such as ArcGIS, MicroStation, Terra Solid, etc. to provide the
necessary information in the form of data, transformations, output, etc
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Whatever data is collected such as maps, satellite imagery, or any other
infrastructure photograph is analyzed and transformed in the necessary format
for viewing or presentation.
• The applications of GIS are vast, and they are mostly used for civil engineering
applications like –
– Determination of Landslide Hazards
– Solid Waste Removal
– Site Selection
– Transportation analysis
– Weather analysis
– Landfill selection
– Pollution analysis…. & more
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Precise Planning
• This phase of the project involves detailed planning from the ground-up for various
scenarios and functions that need to be deployed such as location, environmental
conditions, utilities, contingency scenarios, modeling, etc. Accurate planning
makes it easier to initiate a project or a series of projects.
Information logging
• Whilst collating data, it is crucial for people and devices to collect data for pre-
design analysis, engineering calculations, traffic systems, soil type, area geology,
photogrammetry, and more. A centralized information architecture provides vital
information on multiple data patterns that can be evaluated further.
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Environmental Examination
• Looking at the vast size of the environment, construction engineering companies need to examine
various environmental factors that could affect infrastructure development at the later stages of
construction. Environmental examinations generally include soil types, load bearing capacity of
land, erosion , infrastructure and traffic capacity, forest areas, and more. The application of GIS for
civil engineering renders GIS professionals and construction companies with transparent
information on various geographical trends, multiple area patterns, and other vital connections
that can facilitate efficient & productive construction.
Beginning Design
• As soon as vital data has been collated, it is analyzed and converted into design models through
next-generation CAD tools and software, taking into account parameters like grading, cross-
sections, design calculations, and more. Through accurate 3D models, construction engineers can
move onto the next phase, i.e. construction.
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Moving to construction
• Once all the models and information is in place, it paves the way for construction
companies to deploy various engineering tools and machines onsite, as well as
calculate material quantities and volumes, logistics management, manpower
creation, traffic analysis, and more.
Coming to a closure
• GIS technology helps companies visualize, upgrade , and build infrastructure and
make informed decisions to move further with your construction plans. Through
the demands of time and budget, it has become very important for engineering
firms to focus on GIS as the best alternative that makes absolute sense for
mapping and high quality visualization.