GIS based information system for village level planning


Model Execution logic
The model execution requests the project parameters and then evaluates each for its degree of suitability. When the model completes its run the land suitability assessment is displayed and appropriate recommendations suggested according to the degree of grade attained finally. (A sample run of fuzzy model for a particular land parcel is screen captured and the associated suggestions is depicted in slide3 of PowerPoint presentation) The cumulative suitability index of the output parameter reflects the extent of contribution of parameters to the suitability and the final membership value for all the criteria's represents the final suitability rating. Based on the final membership grade received for the recommendations the ranking is assigned for the land resource suggestions.

The query shell approach is meant for experts in respective thematic fields, to query for area of the expert user and hence suggest action plan by spatially and tabularly viewing the queried result. This module is particularly useful for site specific query on the resource. For instance, if the demand for onion is quite high in a period the user can identify areas in the village suitable for growth of the vegetable and advice the farmer of the particular land to go in for the vegetable.

Module 2
Soil formed the most important non-renewable natural resource determining the success of agriculture in any tract. It was, therefore, essential to make a scientific appraisal of soil resources, especially for their potential and constraints, so that sustainable production is planned and achieved in the wake of shrinking land resource and population explosion. In this context module2 is incorporated with Soil Information system containing information for researchers, planners, scientist etc. The decision amenable from the database was interpreted for
  • Land Capability ( Limitations in land use become progressively greater from Class I to VIII with subclasses based on the predominant limitations for landuse namely erosion(e), excess water (w), rootzone limitation (s) and climatic limitation(c).) (Ref : Slide 6)
  • Land Irrigability Class ( Indicates the nature of limitation for irrigation namely soil(s), topography(t) and drainage(d).(Ref : slide 6)
  • Productivity of the Soils (Ratings: Excellent, Good Average, Poor and extremely poor.) (Ref: Slide 7)
  • Crop Suitability (Ratings : S1-Highly suitable, S2-Moderately suitable, S3-Marginally suitable, N1-Currently not suitable, N2-Permanently not suitable)
  • Erodability factor (Ref: Slide 8)
  • Co-efficient of Improvement. (Ref: Slide 8)
The Soil information serves as a datawarehouse of detailed soil survey information on Permeability of the soil, Detailed physical and chemical properties of the series, extent of the series in the village and other associated attributes which is customized through dialog designer and extensively coded in Avenue, for data retrieval both spatially and tabularly. (Slides 6 - 11 refers to soil information system)

Module 3
This module is basically meant for spatial view of the aspatial data present in MS-Access database and connected through SQL connect facility of ArcView. Parcel level information can be had by clicking the relevant land parcel and the information is displayed in the forms designed for the specific table of information.. Also the variation of the aspatial data can be viewed by displaying the variations in charts option of the legend editor. Relevant statistics for user specified field can be had through the options provided with the forms. Provisions has been made to link the spatial and aspatial data, for instance the user can link landuse theme with population database and hence query for information wherein there is barrenland and a said amount of population. The result of the query can be saved for future retrievals and also reports of the same can be had through crystal report.

The spatial analysis tool can be used to suggest areas suited for public utility centers, and primary themes of the natural resource can be integrated to find areas suitable to improve the ground water potential by suggesting percolation ponds.(slide 13 of powerpoint presentation).

Results & discussion
A flexible and user friendly information sytem was developed to assist planners for village level planning with reference to managing the resource of Naranapuram village. The land resource development module is broad based suited to different users wherein the expert system approach provide land suitability maps at a quick instance for the village and also acts as a storehouse of experts opinion. But this approach lacks dynamism, which is a normal prerequisite for the changing site conditions. The fuzzy approach can be used for site specific analysis and the membership grades can be used for queries for successive suitability rating for the area. The query shell is flexible for an expert user to query for his preset conditions and check for the spatial extent and accordingly suggest plans. This can be particularly useful to check for possible drawbacks or potential of an area before going in for any developmental activities in the area. The soil information module of the system is a veritable knowledge base of detail soil related information of the village, which can help in scientific planning, and development. The information can be used to assess the capability of the area for its shortcomings and hence to improve the productivity capacity. Furthermore the spatial analysis tool of the system is a handy option for the planners to correlate spatial information and hence to zero in areas of the planners interest, such site suitability assessment for and developmental activities, funds allocation etc.

The points discussed in the paper is a few of the many functionality of the Information system and with the ease of use of the system and the temperament of the user much more valuable information can be retrieved for formulating more accurate and concrete plans.

Reference
  • Bryan H Massam (1988), "Spatial search application to planning problem in the public sector", Pergamon Press Limited, Oxford, England
  • Burrough, P.A. (1986). "Principles of Geographical Information System for Land Resources Assessment", Clarendon Press - Oxford, England
  • Chuvieco, E (1993), :Integration of linear programming and GIS for Landuse Modelling", International Journal of Geographic Information Systems (vol 7) (77-83)
  • Earl Cox (1994), " The Fuzzy Systems Handbook - A practitioner's Guide to Building, Using, and Maintaining Fuzzy Systems", Academic Press Limited, London.
  • Ghosal, A and Ghosh, S., (1992), "Integration of Remote Sensing, GIS and Database management system in Resource planning", Proceedings of the International Space Year conference on Remote Sensing and GIS, Hyderabad, (pp: 369-373)
  • Jones, J.W. (1993), " Decision Support Systems for agricultural development, Systems approaches for Agricultural development", Kluwer Academic Publishers, Netherlands (pp: 459-471).
  • Juiyao Pan, Guilherme, N.Desouza et.al. (1998), " A large scale expert system shell using Fuzzy logic for uncertainty reasoning", IEEE transactions on fuzzy systems (Vol 6)(No 4) (34-38).
  • Maji A., Krishna, N.D.R., Sehgal, J and Velayutham, M.(1998), "Dissemination of Soil information for district level planning using GIS", GIS India(21-25)

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