GIS & RS : Ultimate tool for efficient Greater Ranchi Planning Lalan Kumar Central Mining Research Institute, India Email: lalan_seminar@yahoo.co.in. Ranjit Singh Private Secretary to Minister Revenue, Land Reforms, Registration, Science & Technology, Govt. of Jharkhand Geographically Ranchi is heterogeneous and due to its varied topological features, any developmental processes disturb the land, village forests, and natural resources etc. Activities like unplanned use of land and steep slopes for cultivation, and heavy engineering works in the Hatia (Part of Ranchi), can easily be taken into consideration to activate the ecological degradation. As natural resources act as an important base for subsistence purposes, so some means should be devised to let them use these resources. Jharkhand region needs much more attention due to regular occurrences of deforestation and improper urbanization. The present paper attempts to analyse these issues by looking into the feasibility of RS and GIS based integration systems in the Jharkhand State and specially for the Greater Ranchi Planning and a model has been proposed. For a Greater Ranchi City (Capital of Jharkhand State), we have tried our label best to propose the best alternative for the greater Ranchi by using GIS & RS and hope it will cater all the requirement of a nodal state capital. Here as we have already planned city like Bhubaneswar and Chandigarh, but this paper is bit different from those cities keeping in mind the geographical condition of Ranchi. Since the urban scenario is a rapidly changing & complex phenomenon, which require enormous amount of dynamic data to support the decision system. Unfortunately in India Initial Development Plans prepared by Local Authorities rarely used computer-mapping technology. So, obviously all these plans become obsolete over a time period. The Local authorities in India have understood the requirement of GIS in their everyday operations. In most of the cases Local Authorities are planning to develop an Urban GIS application to provide wide range of analysis capabilities. There is an urgent need to adopt Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System approach in urban development. and monitoring process for implementing pragmatic plan of Urban development. The plan must incorporate an integrated approach of spatial modeling using Remote Sensing Data, GIS database and GPS solutions. This helps in evolving efficient and economical models for development and location of industries, education, housing, water supply, service facility and disposal system etc. The existing Development plans are too backdated for these applications. Local Authorities will have to update the plans to find out the present situation in the ground. The availability of high resolution Satellite Images has made this upgradation faster, easier & accurate. The requirement of limited ground survey has made these projects cost effective. The urban areas in the developing world are under constant pressure of a growing population. Indian cities are experiencing an accelerated pace of growth since independence. Cities are now emerging as centers of domestic & international investments in an era of economic reforms, liberalisation and globalization. This has created opportunities for technologists and planning professionals to guide and develop the process of planned development and management. Today’s Government is moving towards Geographical Information System (GIS) & Remote Sensing (RS) for better planning keeping all the important parameters in mind. The Government is becoming more sensitive towards the said tool for efficient panning, designing, implementation and monitoring. Efficient urban information system is a vital pre-requisite for planned development. The increasing demands in urban planning and management sectors call for co-ordinate application of remote sensing and Geographic Information System (GIS) for sustainable development of urban areas. With the advent of this technology, the challenge is more towards changing perceptions. With a highly efficient omnipresence objective, the service oriented model will be discussed in the light of six C’s – Capital Geographical location, Citizen Approach, Competencies, Connectivity (many things), Control and Capability (for extensibility in future). The availability of high resolution data from different satellites has revolutionized the process of thematic mapping and spatial data base creation, specially, in the context of urban and regional planning. Whereas the technologies such as GIS has emerged as a powerful tool in integrating and analyzing the various thematic layers along with attribute information to create various planning scenarios for decision making .