Urban GIS applications development

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Urban GIS applications development - need of the hour

Senthil Shanmugam
Consultant, Karnataka State Remote Senssing Applicaon Centre (KSRSAC)
No 8, ground floor, MSB III block, KSCMF ltd bldg,
Cunnningham road, Bangalore 560052
Telephone number(s): 080-2389974, 2352546, 2386537
Fax number: 080-2386528
E-mail: samsenthil@yahoo.com

Abstract
The objective of this paper is to analyse the various issues involved in the Urban GIS application development, and how it meets the timely requirements of the various local urban authorities. The various issues discussed in this paper are, the process of urban GIS application development – starting from the collection of the data or acquisition of data, and the various methods employed, data base development, GIS development and the customized application development etc. The analysis of the various issues and the requirements of the local authorities leads to the recommendations on the need of the hour for urban GIS application development. The paper finally concludes with the results of the analysis, and the broad recommendations or guidelines for urban GIS application development.

2. Introduction
Urban GIS application, is an essential decision support system for any local Urban authority, which handles complex urban issues varies from road development, solid waste management, drainage, hospitals, the property tax collection and the tax assessment etc. All of the various urban issues, the urban authorities has to involve in the planning, development and monitoring of the various infrastructure facilities.

The foremost need of these authorities is to have the scientifically prepared digital basemap, which showing the existing infrastructure facilities like roads, drains, the built up areas and the waterbodies etc. These basemaps also helps them in knowing the extent of their jurisdiction and the various divisions like zones, ranges and wards etc for day to day monitoring and development works. The other requirements of the local authorities is the detailed digital maps of the various local areas/wards which is showing the properties/buildings, utilities etc. These detailed digital maps (database), which many of the authorities, not affordable in terms of the cost and also the time required for development of these digital databases also enormous. So for these local authorities the essential requirement like the development of GIS application has to be affordable and time bound solutions. The GIS based decision support systems development has to address these two major issues of cost and time of the local authorities.

3. The process of urban GIS application development
There are three phases involved in this kind of project, first phase involves the study of the existing system and analysis to arrive at the objectives of the project, the second phase involves data analysis, data collection, database design and development and third phase involves the implementation aspects like application development, customization and training etc. The first phase is the study of existing system – (local authorities) of data available with the local authority. This step must be given more importance to make use of the available data with the authority.

The second phase involves the data analysis, data collection and database development. Data needs assessment has to be dome extensively, in terms of what level of details, accuracy and to be precise-what is needed at this point of time and meets the immediate requirements of the local authority. This stage of the project is very crucial, in terms of the cost & time since 50% of the total project cost and time will be spent on this stage of development. The suitable data for this kind of project has to assessed based on the affordable time a cost by the local authority. The comparative analysis of the various data & process for the large scale mapping & GIS projects as explained in the table1 (enclosed table)

Guidelines for the large scale mapping & GIS projects -analysis of the various process

Sl.no.		High Resolution Satellite Images	Aerial photos	Ground Survey (Total 100%)
1.	Preparatory work for Mapping	Provision of Extents of the area for Satellite image to the agency (specifications – broad level needed)	Provision of Extents of the area, to the agency, and finalisation of the frames required (area), (detailed specifications needed)	Start from the scratch, extensive planning of the work, coordination with teams (whole to part method), need for proper base map
2.	Procurement and clearance ·	Procurement from NRSA no clearance required (restricted areas will be masked) ·	Flying / Photography from NRSA · Defence clearance required	From any registered surveying agency (survey work)
3.	Availability of data	Available throughout the year	Seasonal (Dec-April)	Ground Survey work can be done any time (except summer season)
4.	Approval of competent authority	NIL	Ministry of Defence Approval takes minimum 3-4 months	NIL
5.	Cost of data	Quick bird – (35 $ per sqkm) Rs.1750/sqkm	Photography, (flying) scanning, mosaicing – Rs. 6750 sq.km	At the completion of the project – will get estimate.
6.	Establishment of Ground Control points	Less GCPs required, 1-5 Nos. for every 10 sq.km. (50 primary (principal) control points, tie points, well distributed for inter- visibility and for Ground Survey	Comparatively more GCPs required (min 4 per bundle)	Depends on the area covered. (more numbers even at every street/road)
7.	Prepointing	5 to 10% of total control points, act as for prepointing	Cost – 7000 Rs. Per Point ( Rs. 3,000 for monumentation and 4,000 Rs. For GPS observation)
8.	Rectification of Data	Rectification of Satellite Images using GCPs, Rs. 1,750 / sq.km	Part of Photogrammetry - Data capture process
9.	Data Capture	For Feature extraction, Rs. 12,800 / sq.km	For Photogrammetry / Data Capture Rs. 25,600 /sq.km
10.	Ground Survey / Field Verification ·	Ground Survey work is needed, for property & utility details. (Property boundaries, building details and other utility details· The details other than in from base map are needed ·	Ground survey work is needed for property & utility details. · The details other than from the base map only needed	100% Ground Survey work, all the details – included details required for the base map apart from the property & utility details, property boundaries, building details & other utilities like drainage, electricity, water supply etc.
11.	Total Cost / Sq.km for Ground Survey Work	Rs. 23,300 for Data Cost & data extraction, part Ground Survey Work Costs– 20,000 to 30,000 per sq.km depends on the amount of details needed for the project	Rs. 39,300 for data & data extraction, partground Survey works 20 to 30,000 per sq.km, depends on the amount of details needed for the project.	Total cost is (min) Rs. 80,000 to Rs.1,00,000 / sq.km, it will vary for high medium and low densely built up areas.
12.	Time	Maximum 2 or 3 months for acquisition of data, data capture works and part Ground Survey Work, one or 2 months	Maximum 2 or 3 months for acquisition of data (subjected to MOD Clearance ) and part Ground Survey works for one or 2 months	Time required is minimum 3 to 5 months for one sq.km area, it will vary depends on the density of the area
13.	Area Coverage	More area covered in a single scene (16.5 x 16.5 km )	Less area covered per photo	Less area covered (in order to maintain accuracy)
14.	Contour intervals	3 m Contour	1 m Contour	Flat Terrain – 0.2 to 0.5 m Hilly Terrain – 1.0 to 2.0 m
15.	Updation	Repetitive coverage, available throughout the year	Availability is based on request for flying (fresh data)	Tedius to carry on updation, resurvey work and cost also increases by two fold.
16.	GIS Database development ·	GIS ready format (Arc images coverages / shape files)· No time required for GIS database development ·	Data cleaning is required· Topology building is to be done· Bringing it to GIS compabile format· 30% total project of time required for this work ·	Survey data has to be converted into drawings then clean up & topology, then GIS database to be developed· 50% of project time required for Database Development
17	Availability Control : Eror and verification ·	Not much , except the system generated· Cross verification is easier with the satellite image ·	Error accumulated from the photogrammetryprocess and database.· Cross verifications is possible with the help of photos ·	Susceptible to lot of errors ( human involvement)Ground Survey, conversion of survey data & database developement· 100% cross verification is tedious and not able to verify all the areas.

Three different sources of data, one is high resolution satellite images, second one is the Aerial photos and the third one is the data collected by means of Ground Survey. The various experiences in India and abroad, shows the combination of these data is the optimal solution. Each one of these three different sources of data has their own advantages. The widely used source of data nowadays, is the high resolution satellite images like IKONOS, Quickbird and India Remote Sensing (IRS) data. ISRO is launching specific satellites for the urban planning & development purposes like CARTOSAT, RESOURCE SAT, etc. So in the future, satellite data is the main source of data, because of competitive nature and number of private satellite like Quickbird & IKONOS come into picture, the cost and acquisition time also less compared to other sources of data like Aerial photos and Ground Survey methods.

Digital Globe with their Quickbird Satellite (60cm resolution), is at the forefront of commercial satellite imagery acquisition. The comparative study report by EMap International on Quickbird product comparison (Aug, 2002) results shows that 60 cm panchromatic imagery is of sufficient resolution to provide a base for mapping and will support applications and services at between 1’ = 200’ and 1” = 400’ scale. The 60cm multispectral imagery is of sufficient quality to provide for a broad range of vegetation health and environmental compliance services. Natural colour imagery can provide for crop-forest and wetland monitoring, capture pollution sources and be used to track construction. The oblique imagery is particularly valuable for property assessment and appraisal purposes, urban and regional planning, transportation planning, and maintenance and environmental protection. The different application are major landuse planning transportation planning, local planning and development, appropriate for utility service area designations and / or sewer and water service area designations, appropriate for parcel mapping. And it is the most useful for local government in tax collection, for property appraisal and tax collection. The 2002 Quickbird imagery ( 2 foot – 60cm) clearly shows features which may be used to assist in determine property ownership including, sidewalks, driveways, fences and tree / shrub lines, these features will enable the generation of a digital parcel layer which will greatly assist in property appraisal and tax collection functions.

The experience of many local authority / governments in India and abroad shows that, Remote Sensing based data like High resolution Satellite images and aerial photos is widely used as the digital base and can be supplemented by ground survey means of data collection, wherever necessary. The disadvantages of using only ground survey methods, one is time consuming, human involvement leads to lot of errors, and subjected to local conditions – like weather, resistance from the local people, other obstructions like traffic etc, the lack of resources in the public and private sector and the not commercial friendly nature of the surveys compared to other Engineering surveys.

4. Experiences from the different urban GIS projects
There are many attempts by different authorities in the Urban GIS application development, no one is successful in the Indian soil to implement for the entire local authority, as it is other way in the local authorities abroad. It shows lack of planning and there is no long terms vision. Many of the projects in India, failed because the approach is short-sighted, it only dealt with the wishes of the few people, and not concerned about the holistic/mass approach towards addressing the complex issues faced by the Urban authorities / areas as a whole.

Three different attempts in the city of Bangalore, one attempt was by BATF (Bangalore Agenda Task Force), is the first and foremost in the city of Bangalore. The objectives and the approach towards the problem (pilot level) was good, even data analysis and data collection method was also good (Cadastral survey maps and ground survey work was done wherever it is needed). But the project failed to address the problem as a whole, at city level (or holistic approach) and it was not able to take it forward because there is no long terms plan as such, no plans for different phases of development, from the pilot level to the city level development.

The other attempt is by the Karnataka State Remote Sensing Applications Centre (KSRSAC). It was the good approach and objectives are well defined to implement it at the city level. The use of high-resolution satellite Images (IKONOS) and the Cadastral Maps, Ground Survey was done to Supplement the data needed at the pilot level.

And other attempt is by the Directorate of Municipal Administration (DMA) to develop urban GIS application. The project was not defined well enough by the client and the approach also not consistent enough to implement at the entire local authority level. There is no definite term of process, starting from the data collection, data analysis and to the database development. The project itself is an attempt to study and define the methodology. Initially, it was planned to use high resolution satellite image or aerial photos and the ground survey methods and the project priorities changed over the time and it is not co-ordinated well enough to implement at the entire local authority level

The analysis of these three attempts shows that there is no balanced approach, except the attempt by the Karnataka State Remote Sensing Application Centre (KSRSAC), in terms of the user needs assessment, data used and the methodology as a whole. The other two attempts, there is no balanced approach, in terms of data, data collection and the application development, either the project tries to do too many things without defining the user requirement, or the process and the objectives are not defined well enough to implement at the local authority level.

So all these experiences, results in the need for balanced approach, extensive study of user needs assessment, well defined methodology and the long term approach (holistic approach) in the use of different data, GIS database development and customized application development.

5. Analysis and recommendations - need of the hour
Many of the studies, projects and the analysis result shows that the lack of planning in terms of the what the user needs and what the solutions arrived at the end of the project. There is a gap between the demand and the supply, it is not only because of the lack of effort in analyzing the problem as a whole, lack of standards and methods and the approach to the problem. The problem is not approached in the holistic way and short – term plans and lack concentration in long term impact of the project and the implementation. The analysis also shows that each stage/phase of the project has to be assessed against the user needs and affordability (time & cost) or requirements like what kind of data needed, data resources, GIS database development, application development and training etc. In many stages, lack of expertise available with the local authorities also results in the failure of the project, it has to be sorted out by means of in house training or outsourced to the established agencies. The project management and the coordination between different teams also not much given importance, it leads to the delay and costs the quality of the project. So the solutions must be based on what the user wants and based on holistic approach, and taken into consideration the various stages of the project and the long term perspective of the project. The Solutions must be simple and must use the latest spatial technology available to suit the demands of the user rather than the opportunistic approach.

6. Conclusions
The various projects and the analysis shows that, it is achievable only by setting the standards for each stage of the project and the future of the project and its long term impact, and benefits. Urban GIS application development, involves lot of resources, cost, time and technical manpower, so it has to be meticulously planned and executed within the affordable limits of the local authority otherwise it won’t solve the problem of the user. While planning the project, the user has to be involved in all the stages, and they must be given the understanding/experience of the approach of the entire project, so that the user won’t feel like the outsider to the solution. So the need for more pragmatic approach to the problem and it takes into consideration the user needs at the point of time, this might may be the– need of the hour- solution.