Managing distribution of national examinations using geospatial technologies: A case study of Pumwani and Central divisions

摘要

Most of the spatially referenced data held by the Kenya national examination council (KNEC) are inanalogue hard copy format. This necessitates large storage facilities for storing the paper maps, whichhave low retrieval speeds. Additionally, wear and tear are occasioned during retrieval and handling, andsometimes some of the data is lost. In this form data sharing is difficult and reproduction usuallyinvolves high costs per unit. The purpose of this paper is to implement a geographic informationsystem (GIS) which will lower cost per unit, by allowing higher retrieval speeds, smaller storagefacilities requirements, while facilitating data sharing. This GIS will perform all the tasks of the currentmanual system and in addition, provide functionality to aid in the efficient management of the Kenyanational examination council data. To accomplish this, existing hardcopy data was digitized andcleaned. New data was collected, processed, analyzed and stored in the form of a geodatabase. Thisgeodatabase stores both the spatially related data and the attribute data. This geodatabase can be usedto answer many questions, but for this work, we emphasize the aspect of efficiency in examdistribution. To determine the most efficient routes to follow in the distribution of examinations duringthe examination period, a geometric network was prepared which was then used to determine the bestroutes. In this research, a prototype GIS has been developed. Visualization and comparison can beeasily performed using the digital maps produced from the implemented system. The GIS databasecreated can be used for purposes of querying and can be revised whenever new information isavailable. Shortest distances analysis and efficient distribution route determination were performedusing spatial analysis and network analysis tools. From the distribution analysis, the service areaanalysis is demonstrated as giving a more realistic spatial extent of coverage compared to the bufferingapproach. From these analyses, the services area analysis and buffering approach showed areas of980.96 and 223.15 Ha being beyond zone 5.