THE USE OF THE COMPUTER IN HIGHWAY DESIGN: THE STATE OF THE ART

The history of computer-aided highway design in the U.K. is briefly discussed, and the currently available programs (BIPS3, HIGHWAYS/1, and MOSS) are outlined. The enhancements to be implemented shortly are indicated, and the longer term possibilities of design are pointed out. All the three programs allow the design to proceed in the following stages: ground model, ground cross-section, horizontal alignment, preliminary design and noise assessment, super elevation, road cross-section, full road cross-section,and earthwork quantities. The BIPS3 (British Integrated Program System) programs are available on all the common makes of computer and are also running on minicomputers. HIGHWAYS/1 is a GENESYS Sub-system, one of the features of which is that the computation is controlled by commands written in a problem oriented language coupled with data in tabular form, all in free format. The MOSS system versions are available for a number of different machine types. The basic concept of MOSS is a computer system for building models in the form of spatial coordinates with associated attributes.