$4.3 million grant for road maintenance management

Japanwill transfer technologies to help Vietnam enhance capacity in road maintenance management.
This is one of major content of the Technical Cooperation Project which will be signed in Hanoi on July 1 between Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the Directorate for Roads of Vietnam (DRVN).
The project for “Capacity Enhancement in Road Maintenance” has been formulated to help DRVN enhance its road maintenance capacity through the establishment of a modern information system to manage the national road network, which has now expanded over 16,758 kilometers.
“With the rapid growth of economy in Vietnam, the role and functions of the Directorate for Roads of Vietnam have become more and more important in underpinning the socio-economic growth” said Tsuno Motonori, chief representative of JICA in Vietnam.
“However, to date, much attention has been paid for road construction rather than for road maintenance with less investment in the institutional and technological development for the maintenance. Therefore, the project has been formulated to help the Directorate enhance its maintenance capacity.”
According to JICA experts, the new project does not focus on conventional road maintenance technologies such as road cleaning, road asphalting or water drainage but introduces the application new information technology on managing and monitoring the situation of the road system.
Based on the data input, the software system will analyse and give out assessment on current situation and level of damage of the road, on repair need at different level and estimated budget for road maintenance.
“The software we introduce uses new algorithm developed by experts from Kyoto University,” said Dr Phan Le Binh, JICA’s senior expert.
“In order to function, the new algorithm needs only 20 variables against 150 variables as requested by other similar software. Therefore, the project is highly practical and effective,” affirmed Binh.
Also within the project, the Directorate’s staffs will be transferred with skills and maintenance management technologies through on the job training courses.
The project will be carried out for 2.5 years, starting from middle 2011. The government of Japan provides 345 million JPY (around $4.3 million) as non-refundable aid to the project. – VIR

Tags: Vietnam Infrastructure

Posted by VBN on Jun 29 2011. Filed under Infrastructure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry