Geographical Information Systems

1600 Words7 Pages
Geographical information system (GIS) is a computer based information system used to digitally represent and analyze the geographic features present on the earths’ surface and the events that take place on it. Urban planning is one of the main applications of GIS. Urban planners use GIS both as a spatial database and as an analysis and modeling tool. The applications of GIS vary according to the different stages, levels, sectors and functions of urban planning. With the increase in user, friendliness and functions of GIS software and the marked decrease in the prices of GIS hardware, GIS is an operational and affordable system for planning. It is increasingly becoming an important component of planning support systems. Record advances in the integration of GIS with planning models, visualization and the internet will make GIS more useful to urban planning. The main constraints in the use of GIS in urban planning today are technical issues, but the availability of data, organizational change and staffing. Urban planners use GIS in the following ways. Resource inventory Geographic information, when integrated with remote sensing can save time in collecting land use and environmental information. They can help to detect land use changes for whole urban areas. In particular, stereoscopic pairs of digital aerial photographs can be used to derive 3 dimensional CAD models of buildings for dynamic visualization of a city, or for direct import into a GIS database. Analysis of existing situations GIS can help to store, manipulate and analyse physical, social and economical data of a city. Planners can then use the spatial quory and mapping functions of GIS to analyse the existing situation in the city. Through map overlay analysis, GIS can help to identify areas of conflict of land development on land suitability maps. Areas of environmental sensitivity can be identified
Open Document