The appearance of revolutionary containerization utilized by maritime transport
sector has led to congested seaports. A transfer of a portion of the activities performed
inside was suggested. A complement to the sea port became desired, which creat
ed the idea
of a dryport. We studied the effect of the dryport’s site, planned to be constructed in Hassia
industrial city, on the Syrian transport network. We used geographic information systems
(GIS) to get the results due potential assistance. Study shows that a dryport increases the
efficiency of the transport system, thus reducing the cost and time of transport.
Furthermore, Hassia industrial city is especially qualified to establish a dryport, and the
eastern region would be the optimal region for such an establishment.
GIS software provide manual import tools to maps produced on CAD software to be transformed to geo-database. This operation consumes time and effort. The "transformation" however will not be
adequate unless we analyze the relation between CAD and GI
S software in preparing maps. The question raised here if this relation competitive or integrative? This research tries to answer this matter
by studying it from different angles: modeling, spatial feature, scale, spatial analysis and data management. Analyses reveal that this relation isn't competitive at all, but rather integrative, as CAD
software produce technical\design plans, whereas GIS software are dedicated for the production of general and thematic maps. Thus, CAD based spatial data (topographic, cadastral, master plans) could
be "up-graded" to be efficient in GIS environment. However available tools to make this are basically manual, and for that, an automated approach was developed to execute this upgrade from CAD to GIS.
This new approach was applied and evaluated and the output results were satisfactory accurate, time\effort saving, and indeed didn't miss any of CAD layers. This all could be achieved if being conditioned with the approach constrains.
