Building the Information Architecture Behind a National Transport System
National Multimodal Transport Modelling & Integrated Infrastructure Database
National Planning Authority, Uganda
Consultative Input — Phase II
Infrastructure Intelligence | Asset Data | Transport Infrastructure Strategy
“Before a country can optimise infrastructure investment, it must first understand how its infrastructure works as a system.”
Problem
Transport infrastructure is rarely a collection of independent assets.
Roads influence rail. Rail influences freight. Freight affects ports and border crossings. Public transport influences urban productivity. Airports connect domestic economic activity to international markets.
Yet infrastructure information can exist across different institutions, formats, geographies and transport modes.
That fragmentation creates a national planning problem.
Without integrated infrastructure information and a model of how people and goods move across the network, decision-makers face a more difficult task answering fundamental questions: Where is demand actually growing? Where are the network constraints? How does investment in one mode affect another? Which interventions create the greatest national economic benefit? Where should the next unit of infrastructure capital be deployed?
Intervention
Dreniak was consulted by Uganda's National Planning Authority in relation to Phase II of a project concerning the development of a multimodal transport model alongside a National Integrated Transport Infrastructure Database.
This represented asset management at a fundamentally different scale.
Rather than assessing one road or one transport asset, the work concerns the information architecture required to understand a national infrastructure system.
Dreniak's contribution brought an asset-management perspective to the discussion: infrastructure data becomes significantly more valuable when it can support decisions around condition, capacity, utilisation, criticality, risk, investment and future demand.
The database dimension is particularly significant. International asset-management practice increasingly treats reliable data as a strategic asset in itself. ISO 55013:2024 specifically addresses the management of data assets in support of asset-management objectives, while the 2024 ISO 55001 revision strengthened requirements around data, knowledge, decision-making, lifecycle operations and value realisation.
How we approached the system
The thinking required interaction across more than engineering.
Transport modelling requires the relationship between infrastructure, geography, population, economic activity, travel behaviour, freight movement, land use and future development to be understood.
The asset-management dimension therefore sits between several disciplines:
Transport Engineering — understanding networks, capacity and infrastructure. Data & GIS — creating structured and spatially meaningful infrastructure information. Planning — connecting infrastructure with national and regional development. Economics — understanding demand, productivity and the consequences of investment. Government & Institutions — understanding who owns, operates, funds and maintains the underlying infrastructure.
This multidisciplinary environment closely reflects Dreniak's philosophy: engineering tells us what exists; data allows us to understand it; economics helps determine what should happen next.
Result
The assignment places Dreniak within a national-level conversation about how infrastructure information can support multimodal transport planning and investment decision-making.
The significance is not simply the creation of another database.
A national integrated infrastructure dataset can create the foundation from which government progressively develops a more coherent picture of its transport assets and networks — supporting modelling, scenario analysis, prioritisation and future infrastructure planning.
Long-term Value
At national scale, relatively small improvements in infrastructure decision-making can have consequences far beyond an individual project.
The UK's current Government Major Projects Portfolio illustrates the magnitude involved: its 2024–25 portfolio contained 213 major projects with approximately £996 billion of whole-life cost, including £433 billion within infrastructure and construction alone. This is why mature infrastructure systems increasingly place such emphasis on portfolio data, assurance and whole-life decision-making.
Uganda's context is different, but the principle travels: better infrastructure information enables better infrastructure decisions.
A mature national transport model connected to reliable infrastructure data can ultimately support questions around corridor investment, network capacity, maintenance priorities, urban growth, logistics, regional connectivity and capital allocation.
For Dreniak, the project represents the progression from: Managing Assets → Understanding Networks → Informing Economies.
Infrastructure becomes more powerful when a nation can see not only the assets it owns, but how those assets work together.
That is Infrastructure Harmony at national scale.