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Application of GIS Possibilities and Limitations
GIS is a useful tool, particularly because of its capacity to support both spatial and non-spatial attributes and to combine purely representational techniques with analytical techniques. It can also be useful for handling data from diverse sources and forming links and interconnections between them. With a number of agencies and organizations involved in planning, the integrated process can well be a 'participatory process' where GIS can serve as a common platform and interface that permits data exchange and collaborative decisions. Although most data in GIS has to be geo-referenced, non-commercial solutions such as those in the environmental context are now looking at ways to integrate non geo-referenced information in GIS.

However, increasing reliance on rigid, cartographic renditions makes these maps extraneous, which can otherwise be a very useful resource for lending an insight into how perceptions of people have evolved over time. Although commercial GIS packages are still incapable of applying statistical analysis to such 'loose' representations, there have been a few recent efforts to integrate 'perceptual maps' in the process of understanding of our environs and such integrations could be made more effective by developing analytical techniques that need to be and could be applied to such cognate models.

Whether visual renditions can be converted into networks for analytical purposes in the urban context would depend on the kind of information that we seek out of them in the process. It can be highly useful if such statistical analytical packages can be linked with GIS, allowing the interchange of data that is mapped as network structure and as visual spatial representations.

GIS allows an immense possibility of data storage and retrieval. In Bhopal urban center, the level of complexity is huge and the involvement of multiple agents that influence the urban landscape demands data collection on several levels and across several dimensions. When this data needs to be manually processed, spatial and non-spatial information can be linked only by limited options, such as keys next to maps or by the use of graphical technique such as colors and symbols. Databases for managing large data sources are now being widely used, but the correlation of data from more than one source is still mostly limited due to data protection policies that exist between various organizations. GIS can provide a base for the spatial and non-spatial data to be interlinked, and developing techniques such as relational databases or object-oriented databases in GIS can realize an added advantage of linking non-spatial data across several levels. Research in the field of 'multiple views' is working towards the creation of parallel views where the same datum can be viewed across several different maps or layers of spatial information. In this instance, GIS provides the advantage of linking databases to information from maps that may be created in other software packages such as 'AutoCAD.

GIS allows for data input from such diverse sources as remote sensing, traditional cartographic maps, aerial photographs and other photographic images. It can be hoped that the data dissemination policy in India will soon be defined for less restricted data exchange and data from remote sensing and other satellite information would be easily available for commercial purposes. Most European countries have relaxed their data protection rules, which allows for better exchange of data at a global level. If historic cities are being seen as global resources and the preservation of them is to be seen as a global responsibility, then it is fair to hope for information to be much more conveniently accessible at a global level. With the Internet forming the prominent interface where most global communities interact, more and more data resources are being made available on the World Wide Web, and any GIS application in the Indian context will benefit from a flexible national policy for data dissemination allowing for greater exchange.

Bhopal Development Plan-2005
BDP-2005 conceives city of Bhopal as a network of self-contained sub-cities each containing sectors, sub-sectors and neighborhoods

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