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The use of GIS in Archiving and Accessing Hostels Information: A Case KNUST Campus
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Quaye-Ballard, J. A., Arko-Adjei, A. and Damoah-Afari, P.
Department of Geomatic Engineering,
Faculty of Civil and Geomatic Engineering,
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science & Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana.
quayeballard.soe@knust.edu.gh
arkoadjei@hotmail.com
Abstract
Accommodation has been one of the major problems students face on Kwame Nkrumah University of Science & Technology (KNUST) campus. Continuing students are not accommodated in the halls and therefore are forced to move into hostels located in and around KNUST campus. One problem students face when looking for hostels is, they do not know where to find the hostel of their choice. In search of hostels, students prefer to have informaton on hostels which are nearer to campus, especially with good facilities, proper sanitation, better management services, conducive atmosphere for learning and most of all with affordable lodging rate. This lack of hostel information arises because there is no proper archive of the hostels in and around KNUST for the students. It is of this view that this project is carried out to archive hostels information using Geographic Information System (GIS) where the students will be able to locate the hostels on a map and find descriptive and pictorial information about the hostels. Global Positioning System (GPS) was used to collect the spatial location of the hostels. Questionnaires were also used to collect the non-spatial data on the hostels’ rate, room size, number of rooms, entertainment fascilities, parking lots etc. Macromedia Dreamweaver MX software was also used to design the webpages on the spatial and non-spatial information of the hostels for users to access on the World Wide Web (WWW).
Introduction
A hostel is an inexpensive supervised, short lodging especially for young people (Macmillan and McGraw-Hill, 1993). In other words, a hostel is a hotel providing short lodging for travelers. A hotel is a commercial establishment that provides lodging and often food, entertainment, and other services for the public, especially for travelers (Macmillan and McGraw-Hill, 1993). There is a relation between a hotel and a hostel since both provide short lodging for visitors. As a result, hostels need to meet ordinary standards of hotels in the provision of good conditions such as good sanitation, easy access to clean water, electricity, proper supervision etc. There is also the need for the hostels’ maintenance. That is, proper preservation of the hostels for students to live in. The problem that arises is that some of the hostels in and around KNUST campus do not meet the criterion spelled above. It is of this view that the project is undertaken to design ways and means of archiving hostels’ spatial and non-spatial information which accommodate KNUST students. The non-spatial information considered are accessibility to hostels and information about their conditions such as water and electricity situation, hostel charges, sanitation, class of hostel, number of students per room and conducive atmosphere for learning. The spatial information is the spatial location (that is, the X and Y co-ordinates) of the hostels. The Global Positioning System (GPS) was used to collect the spatial location of the hostels. The idea behind the project is to collate all these spatial and non-spatial datasets into Geographic Information System (GIS) environment for efficient and effective data input, data management (that is, data storage and retrieval), data manipulation and analysis, and presentation (Aronoff, 1989).
To enhance easy accessibility to the spatial and non-spatial information about the hostels, it was published on the web using HTML programming software. This programming software, that is the Macromedia Software, helped in designing the webpages. This software provided easy access to information and a means of hyper-linking images and illustrations to data in order to provide detailed information.
Although the paper focuses on using GIS to archive spatial and non-spatial information of hostels, hostel maintenance is highlighted to raise the issue of proper preservation and better service for students of KNUST.
Materials and Methods
Verbal Interviews and Questionnaire.
Verbal interviews were conducted for the basic inputs for the design of the GIS application. Fifty-five students responded for the verbal interviewing and questioning. The designs of the questionnaire for the interviews were based on the objective of obtaining information on water and electricity situation, hostel charges, sanitation, number of students per room and nature of atmosphere for learning of the hostels. The questionnaire used exists of closed-ended questions in which the questions are ‘structured’ and ‘totally structured’ types. ‘Structured’ types consisted of questions that are determined and the interviewer codes responses as they are given. ‘Totally structured’ types consisted of questions that the coding is predetermined and the respondent presented with alternatives for the questions so that the phrasing of the responses is structured. These types of questions were chosen for easy coding and easy analysis of respondents’ feedback.
Hostel maintenance
Hostel maintenance is the combination of all technical and associate administrative actions intended to retain hostel or restore hostel to a state in which it can perform its required function (Adjetey et al, 2005). According to the authors, hostel maintenance can be classified under four specific headings namely: planned maintenance, preventive maintenance, running maintenance and unplanned maintenance. Planned maintenance is when hostels are organized and carried out with fore thought, control and the use of records to a predetermined plan. Hostel maintained without predetermined plan is unplanned maintenance. Preventive maintenance and running maintenance falls between planned and unplanned maintenance. Preventive maintenance is a type put in place to reduce the probability of failure or the performance degradation of the hostel. It is carried out at predetermine interval or corresponding to prescribed criteria. Maintenance of hostel carried out whilst in service is termed running maintenance. The hostels sited were classified under planned maintenance, preventive maintenance, running maintenance and unplanned maintenance.