Smart City innovation enhances JRA’s response
New 'map' and application for JRA should sharpen their ability to help residents.
An innovative Smart City application will help the Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA) to respond quickly and effectively to issues relating to infrastructure.
The solution has enabled the JRA to develop a complete view of the city’s roads inventory in a modernised fashion befitting of a world-class African city, CoJ in a recent press statement said.
“Over 1.6 million images and locations of 700 000 JRA assets have been captured onto the system for effortless tracking, monitoring and management.
“The assets are divided into storm water, infrastructure, roads furniture, bridges and street names categories,” the municipality stated.
The application will improve their ability to pick up defects in all the regions, improve proactive maintenance planning and reduce maintenance times, acting JRA managing director Mpho Kau said.
“It will also enhance our road conditions and boost traffic management.
“The system has sufficient storage capacity to keep complete documents and visual records of infrastructure such as roads, bridges and sidewalks.
“Through the system, we are now able to inform the planning of new municipal infrastructure and identify what infrastructure requires attention,” Kau said. According to councillor Christine Walters, the MMC for Transport, the new innovation will result in improved service delivery to the public and better management and planning capabilities for the JRA.
“It is often forgotten that Johannesburg is a dynamic, ever-expanding city with new assets constantly being created. This has resulted in difficulties in the past in terms of management, maintenance, budgeting and planning.
“It was problematic to take decisionw without access to the most recent and accurate information,” she was quoted saying.
Before the Smart City application was put into operation, JRA conducted a comprehensive survey to verify and update its asset information. It was a year-long programme and utilised 50 field workers recruited from communities.
Road infrastructure assets were last audited in 2007. The following interesting facts were noted:
• Since 2007, JRA has seen a 8344 per cent increase in road furniture assets (from 5 342 to 451 103)
• Storm water infrastructure was increased by 283 per cent (from 69 255 to 265 405)
• Surfaced roads increased by 14 per cent (from 9 050.6km to 10 306.2km)
CAPTION:
JRA’s Motshidisi Sebino, Ward 83 councillor Suzanne Clarke and Region C community engagement officer Cecile Retief. Photo: Mathilde Myburgh.
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