GIS based information system for village level planning
Ravindran. A, Jaishankar. J Institute of Remote Sensing, Anna University, Chennai jai_igs@yahoo.com Introduction Planning is now a widely accepted way to handle complex problems of resource allocation and decision-making. It involves the use of collective intelligence and foresight to chart direction, order, harmony and progress in public activity relating to human environment and general welfare. In order to provide a more effective and meaningful direction for better planning and development, necessary support of the organization has become essential. Hence the need for a suitable information system is increasingly being felt in all planning and developmental activities, whether these are for urban or rural areas. The position with regard to information system in urban areas however is far from satisfactory. Large volume of data is gathered whenever preparation of physical plan is taken up and a good number of maps as a part of the exercise on plan formulation are also prepared. However, today no system has been built to compile this geographically referenced data on a systematic manner and store them for retrieval at a subsequent point of time. Planners and decision-makers at Microlevel have to depend upon spatial and non-spatial data for optimal interpretation. Hence, the planners need to have at their disposal sophisticated data management systems to handle such spatially correlated data. The emergence of Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System as a powerful tool for spatial analysis and storage has in effect alleviated the problem by computerization of the spatial data. This new technology can reduce the time and cost to the planners in organizing the data in arriving at precise conclusion and decisions. Here an attempt is made wherein ArcView3.1 GIS is used to develop an information system which can support the planners in information retrieval by integrating the spatial and aspatial data. Objective The primary objective of the study was to develop a Support System focussing on the following lines
Study Area The study area considered was Naranapuram village of Annur Block occupying the western part of Avinashi taluk in Coimbatore district. Data used Thematic maps Soil, Landuse, Slope, Geomorphology, Drainage, Land parcel boundary and Road network was used as the primary natural resource database for the village. The detailed soil resources of Annur block was used for design of Soil Information system. Socio-economic data namely Population detail, Health centers, Employment details, Industry details and associated data where collected from field survey. The thematic maps were digitally entered into the geographic database in the vector format and the data were partitioned into two components (i) Spatial data representing the distribution of features in each physiographic unit and (ii) attribute database representing the socio-economic data. The soil map of the village was digitized manually in Arc/Info, and the associated attribute data were input as info database through keyboard entry. The database forms the base upon which the Information system was designed and is capable of suggesting:
Basically the Information system is designed into 3 modules and the users can select the bounds from the main menu. Module 1 Module 1 is for land resource action plan of the village and the user is requested to make his choice of either Experts approach, Fuzzy approach or Query shell approach. In experts approach the action plan is generated by correlating the various conditions of landform, slope and soil which suits a particular practice was formulated in consultation with experts in respective fields and hence the knowledge base (stored as a text file) was appropriately coded in Avenue to generate the action plan for the area. Provisions to generate the relevant statistics before and after the action plan is provided and can also be charted to study the variations.(Slide 2 of Powerpoint presentation attached depicts the sample output of expert approach for land suitability assessment) In fuzzy approach for land suitability analysis, membership grades were assigned to the existing criteria (namely Geomorpology, Landuse, Soil, Slope) which determines the suitability. This model of fuzzy approach solves many problems where we want all the criteria to contribute something to the final model solution. This model is based upon the geographic conditions existing in the area and the degree of compatibility of the condition with the said suitability. In other words the conditions existing has a degree of fuzziness associated with it. Fuzzy set for the criteria was developed by assigning membership grades for suitability's Agriculture, Agro-horticulture, Silvipasture, Dry farming and Fodder and fuel plantation. The model maps the suitability of individual criteria to an intermediate suitability measuring fuzzy set. The result of this mapping is a scalar value from the domain of the suitability metric indicating the degree of suitability for the particular model factor. 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
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
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