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Land Information Systems for muncipal planning
A. P. Subudhi, B. S. Sokhi & P.S. Roy Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, 4, Kalidas Road, Dehradun Emil: apsubudhi@hotmail.com
Introduction :
Land information is required for the majority of the activities of the municipal authorities. The need for this information is so extensive that municipalities can be considered to be very large producers and consumers of land information. In this paper, a survey result is being presented of the most important activities for which this information is required. The problems in the field of land information systems for urban areas is being described with reference to an investigation carried out in the city of Ropar (Ward No. 5) of Punjab. It also includes an indication of the subjects, which have to be covered by efficient land information for urban activities. Land information : An important part of the surrounding reality consists of land, which includes all geographic units having a fixed location on, in and under the surface of the earth. They vary from large administrative areas to small objects. For example, an area of an industry, for instance, is a geographic unit, as well as a house, a parcel of ground, a cable or a pipeline. Since the activities of the government, industry and private persons, with regard to land are increasing, we see in our society a growing demand for information in connection with land. Collecting, processing and supplying of land information is effected in so-called land information systems. Every city has a lot of such systems, and each covering a part of information. These systems do not cover the complete and there are gaps and overlaps. 
Land information may be classified in two groups. The information referring to the geographic units themselves is called topographical information. The other group is the thematic information. We hereby mean the information that can be added to the geographic units (refer Fig. 1). Another type of land information is in the registrative and statistical information groups. Registrative information refers to geographic units such as the cadastre, cadastral parcels and houses. Statistical information refers to larger units, such as street segments, etc. Statistical information is usually expressed in numerical terms and generally collected using questionnaires. In principle any information can be linked to a geographic unit. For instance, the legal situation, the value or the use that is make of a unit. It can be further explained as land information is an information about the geographic units themselves (topographic information) and the thematic information, which is very closely connected with them. Very important is the location of the geographic units with respect to the surface of the earth. This, in fact, is the only common information of all geographic units. Therefore, the location is pre-eminently the information that serves for the exchange of data between land information systems.
LIS in Municipal Organisations: Within municipal organisation, at least three clusters of activities can be distinguished in which locationally referenced information plays an important role (Fig. 2). In number of technical and administrative departments, land based information is predominantly used for executive tasks, while in planning departments this information processed in order to support decision making. In each of these three "realms" one finds different professional backgrounds and working cultures; and information processing has specific characteristics.  The technical departments deal with the physical aspects of the built development. They fulfill design, building and installation tasks and are also responsible for control and maintenance. In this type of environment, land information systems have to be able to produce detailed and high precision technical maps. Moreover, the systems have to support the daily operations of the department; for example through the production of maintenance schemes and work orders. A central role is played by the large scale base maps including base topography and objects such as buildings, roads, facilities, and distribution networks. In general, relatively few attributes are linked with these maps.
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