Study on Land Use Management with
Geographic Information Systems
Wei-Hsin Ho
Professor, Department of Land Economics,
National Chengchi University,
64, Chih-nan Rd., Sec. 2, Wenshan, Taipei , Taiwan
E-mail: whh@nccu.edu.tw
and
Ge-Wen Lee
Ph. D. Candidate Student, Department of Civil Engineering,
National Chiao Tung University,
Hsin-Chu, Taiwan
E-mail: bearlee@cc04.ccit.edu.tw
Keywords: Land Use, Geographical Information Systems, Potential Areas of Slope Disease
Abstract
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have powerful tools to the analysis of spatial data and the management of land information. The article concentrates on how GISs can improve the land use management. The first step was to design a database based upon the requirements of land use management. Owing to the widely scope of land use management, the requirement analysis specifies on the delineation of development potential areas and development constraint areas for land use. Secondly, a fundamental toolbox was established under PC ARC/INFO and Visual Basic Ver. 6.0. Finally, a application system was constructed on the foundation of the fundamental toolbox. The Nantou County, a mountainous county in central Taiwan, which has abundant natural resources, was selected as the study area. In addition, a set of rules derived in this investigation was applied to predict the potential areas of slope disease. Results of the case study confirm the design of database and the application system. The experiences of the case study indicate the open system and the modulation design are useful to develop a flexible system. Metadata is important to describe the content and usage of database. Moreover, metadata can assist the interface design of the software.
1. Introduction
Geographic Information system (GISs) is a novel technology widely used to survey the land use problem. The GIS adopts the numerical methods and spatial analysis tools to delineate the land use. The methods can yield the same results after repeatedly applying the same procedures. Moreover, they reduce the manpower and time consumption for the delineation of land use. In contrast with the manual methods, the GIS is the most economic and objective methods.
This article describes a pilot study to land use management with GIS. The investigation designed a delineation system of land use with a GIS software (PC ARC/INFO) and a high-level language (Visual Basic). Also constructed herein is a database to implement the delineation of land use. For the effective usage of the database, the metadata which described the attribute definition, code meaning, data quality and production information of maps was generated while the maps were input to the database. Finally, a case study about potential was conducted to evaluate these designs.
2. System Design
2.1 System Framework
The analysis system of land use consists of a module based software, databases and metadata. The fundamental analysis software was designed by PC ARC/INFO SML language. Some tools embedded by the graphic user interface were written by Visual Basic. These tools offer the functions of project management and data management. Visual Basic produces not only a friendly environment for the users, but also effective tools to integrate all the elements in the system. Figure 1 shows the relation between the elements.
Figure 1 The Framework for the Delineation System of Land Use
2.2 System Operation
The system has two operation modes: project management mode and case study. The project management mode can generate a project directory and store the results in the directory. The case study mode provides a relatively easy means of testing the system tools case by case. Under the graphic user interface, the users can select the interest coverage and input the proper parameters.
