A quick tour of Esri Roads and Highways

What follows is a high-level overview of the collection of user interface components that allows you to access and execute Esri Roads and Highways Desktop functionality. The Roads and Highways solution is intended for highway departments that implement GIS and linear referencing systems (LRS) to manage highway/roadway asset information.

Highway departments manage and maintain a broad spectrum of information about their highways. This information is generally distributed throughout the agency, and each dataset is often maintained in its own separate system. These datasets might each relate to the highway in a different way. The public safety group, for example, might maintain crash data based on mileposts located along the highway, while the maintenance section may locate sign and pavement assets based on a distance from a known point of origin.

The key behind the advanced linear referencing system (ALRS) approach is to integrate all business data into a single editing environment so that any edits to the network can be propagated to all associated datasets and also to maintain the temporality of the edits so that different versions of the network can be stored in the database. It is also more efficient to use a single feature class as the source geometry for all network edits. This approach can facilitate interoperability between component systems and across business units by leveraging existing data and establishing improved processes to gather, maintain, and analyze that data.

Advanced Linear Referencing System Setup wizard

The process of integration of feature classes that represent the geometry of the highway and external business tables that represent events/assets on highways can be a daunting task. Even though most highway departments have this information in some form, they are all independent and unaware of its relationships. They don't inherently know what they are connected to—and connectivity is indispensable for managing highway asset information. An advanced linear referencing container, however, stores the interdependencies, and you can create an advanced linear referencing system container using the Advanced Linear Referencing System Setup wizard. The wizard guides you through a series of questions so it can create an advanced linear referencing system container that fits your needs.

The ALRS consists of one or more LRS Networks. Each network contains many routes and event layers. The ALRS Properties dialog box is a single all-inclusive interface to manage the properties of all the subcomponents of the ALRS.

ALRS Properties dialog box

After creating a new ALRS, you might need to access or change its properties. You can do this with the ALRS Properties dialog box, which you can access from the Catalog window in ArcMap.

Note:

Each tab within the ALRS Properties dialog box represents a different component of the ALRS.

Roads And Highways Editing toolbar

The Roads And Highways Editing toolbar in ArcMap provides tools for general-purpose information and editing functionality. It allows you to perform a number of tasks from a single toolbar:

• Select an LRS Network to edit.
• Identify measure values of routes using the Identify LRS Route Locations tool .
• Choose the network editing functionality you want to perform to maintain your network and events.
• Apply the changes to the network and update routes and events with correct measure values.
• Apply the calibration point edits to the network and update routes and events with correct measure values.

Geoprocessing tools

Roads and Highways includes various geoprocessing tools to generate calibration points, update calibration points, and quality-control event data. The data validation geoprocessing tools leverage the ArcGIS Workflow Manager extension for Desktop to help identify and quickly fix data problems.