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GIS in community transition vis- a -vis physical transformation Bhopal
The Integrated Planning Approach
Most of the planning practices in India are designed for an ‘end state’. This may be a very generalised statement but it is a fact that Urban Planning in India is still isolated from the general Conservation process, and both the processes are considered separate and distinct having only minor overlaps in a very few cases. The Master Plan approach is a very two-dimensional approach and concerns itself with demarcation of conservation zones that are similar to minimum interference zones. The historicity of a city cannot be confined solely to such rigidly demarcated zones but has to be seen in totality over the whole landscape. Conservation professionals in India have been advocating strongly for this ‘integrated approach’ since the last few years, but have not been successful in being able to evolve policies and practices which can bring together professionals from planning and conservation together. It is however unimaginable how a process can be partitioned into planning and conservation needs when both concern themselves with the ‘city’. As long as we do not move away from the definite constraints of a Master Plan process and do not bring the user to the forefront, the city will continue to be seen as a system of roads, transport networks and dispersed physical entities. Direct application of such mapping techniques in planning and urban management is yet to be seen where the reliance is still largely on the physical networks for analytical purposes rather than on any mental ones.  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 also 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 organisations involved in planning and conservation in Indian cities, 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. This can be particularly useful when historical maps are to be used for research .The Bhopal Innercity map was prepared using PAN IRS 1C data of 1999 . The analysis is done using ARCVIEW software. Map But increasing reliance on rigid, cartographic renditions makes these historical 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 centre, 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 colours and symbols. Databases for managing large data sources in the listing of historical buildings or census details 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 organisations. GIS can provide a base for the spatial and non-spatial data to be interlinked, and by developing techniques such as relational databases or object-oriented databases in GIS an added advantage of linking non-spatial data across several levels can be realised. 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. The data input in GIS requires spatial units to be enclosed by rigid boundaries, which can certainly be a disadvantage when considering aspects such as historic zones. For example, any representation of the seven historic cities of Delhi should not define strict boundaries between them since most of these exist only as research interpretations from historical sources that are then transferred onto the ground. Cartographic renditions have a tendency to simplify such issues and use rigid demarcations for the convenience of applying planning policies or other such guidelines and also for the sake of adapting such data to largely accepted graphical symbols. Most commercial GIS packages have some basic statistical analysis techniques available within them that need to be explored for resource management applications. The application of such analysis to abstract attributes such as ‘historicity’ and ‘cultural values’ is certainly an issue for further research although this has been attempted in a few archaeological applications. Conclusions Plans are afloat to use GIS as a tool for the preparation of the next Master Plan in Bhopal.The application GIS wll probably involve immense upheavals in organisational and financial terms. However, it has to be realised that an optimum use of this application cannot be achieved unless the benefits that are we hope to derive from it are clearly defined. This will need a two-step methodology. Firstly, the aims and objectives have to be clearly defined for the project and a full review of the limitations of the presently employed techniques must be conducted. Secondly, GIS has to then be assessed to see how it can be used to derive maximum benefit from it, and the changes that would be needed in the present scenario in turn to help derive these benefits. References
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