Integrated Planning using GIS & Other Computational Tools Satyam Thakar Research Associate at the Roadway Transportation and Traffic Safety Research Center (RTTSRC) UAE University UAE. 1- Background A Geographic Information System (GIS) needs no introduction for the purpose of this paper. GIS based tools gather information and analyze the natural and man-made structure on the earth’s surface. Since its inception, GIS applications found its way through sectors ranging from land use planning to ecosystems modelling to transportation planning, to name a few. Since the inception of human life on earth, we human beings have been planning our future, ranging from our household tasks to big projects. The process is still unchanged while output format has changed from charcoal drawings on cave walls to paper sketches using a pencil or digital drawings on computers. The methodology of integrated planning for better land management incorporates planning aspects such as regional development, urban design, environment and ecology, socio-economic aspects, and transportation. This paper is based on a case study carried out as a part of a postgraduate program ‘Master of Infrastructure Planning’ at Universität Stuttgart (Germany) in year 2004-05, based on the data available from aerial photos, statistical data from the Turkish Ministry website and surveys carried out earlier, the author hereby presents one perspective adopted according to their group vision. The Case Study Area (CSA) spreads over approximately 5500 ha of land of Çigli and some of its neighbouring districts (for year 2000, population nearly 125,000) of Metropolitan Municipality of Izmir (MMI), Turkey. For year 2000, the province spreads over on nearly less then 2% of land accommodating nearly less than 4% of Turkey’s total population people (i.e. with population density nearly 280 persons per sq. km.) . The CSA contains the Basin of Gediz River, salt fields, military airport region, wetlands, an organised industrial zone, a waste water treatment plant and a solid waste dump site, making it nearly a dump yard of the MMI. 2- Periods in a Process of Integrated Planning ‘Determining land use can be considered the initial pragmatic decision in shaping the future of a human settlement’ as aptly said by Lozano (1990, cited Kaiser 1995). According to Kaiser (1995), Integrated Planning process may be divided into three stages, each consistent in it is described as follows. 2.1- Policy Framework Plan (PFP) PFP consists of four stages as described below, where during its formulation, planners or authorities representing every planning aspect need to carry out work individually and as a team also. 2.1.1- Integrated State of Community Report Initially, an integrated state of community report of the CSA needs to be generated based on inputs from all planning group aspects. The report evaluates the status of the CSA and uses it as a base throughout the planning process. For example, an Urban/Town Planner identifies the urban fabric, land use, spatial structures, and building typology along with their densities and the infrastructural facilities provided in terms of quantity and quality. An Environmentalist should identify bio-sensitive areas, soil type, quality of air/water (surface and subsurface), etc. Since, the CSA has wetland area identified as sensitive under the Ramsar Convention and also adjoins to a bird’s sanctuary which makes it important in terms of biodiversity exist in the region. The existence of the creeks and channels in the region meant to be used for storm water being used for sewage disposal damaging the environment. A Socio-economic Planner at least considers important criteria such as population trends, labour market, and income distribution. Population trends include comparing different age groups of natural population growth and incoming migrants, to identify infrastructural facilities required like education, health, employment, old age homes, etc. Also, share of different employment sector shall be identified along with the future scope in these sectors. A Transportation Planner identifies the existing transportation infrastructure like road geometry and parking allotment and assumes the availability of passenger car units using the income distribution of the region and household surveys in cooperation with Socio-Economic Planner. Existence of an efficient ferry network, an inefficient train network along with lacking infrastructure for pedestrians and bicyclists needs proper care in planning to make a sustainable plan. 2.1.2- Vision Now Vision 2020 for the region is set up for a 20 year development plan. Several planning aspects cannot have a vision or a development plan limited to a small region, aspects such as transportation planning shall be in line with that of the MMI. Various scenarios for development can be envisaged for a region into consideration. Vision can vary based on the lacking entities like health or hygiene and potential in the region like oil exploration, etc. It shall relate to a planned urban structure which either emphasizes sustainable development in terms of economic prosperity and moderate consideration of environment or with better hygiene but moderate economical development. In the current scenario, scarcity of land and money for development needs to be kept in mind to find a sustainable development plan. Accordingly, a development pattern and axis needs to be delineated, along with the hierarchy of economic centres, transportation axes, etc. 2.1.3- Planning Guidelines Now the planners from different sectors can draft planning guidelines to achieve the goal, initially, according to land classes and then as per different land uses. These guidelines should not clash with each other and hence, after individual drafting by a planner, a final set of mutually non-conflicting guidelines shall be created. (A) Planning Guidelines for Land Classes The CSA was differentiated into three Land Classes based on relatively uniform set of soil characteristics such as soil type, slope, etc. allowing it to support typical use of certain intensity, namely as areas for Natural Processes, Agriculture and Human Settlement Activities. The later is divided into Rural and Urban Areas which are considered as either stable or transitional. Guidelines as per an Urban Planner can be redevelopment and up-gradation plan for existing commercial centres, scattered industrial units and Gecekondu housing areas. While a socio-economic planner needs sets up target GDP growth rate of the region based on the tolerable forecasted unemployment rate, participation rate and desired sector wise distribution of employment, etc. Ecological Planner delineates ecologically sensitive areas, airflow corridors should be maintained and further blockage in the built-up areas should be avoided. A Transport Planner plans to modify the geometry of the main road to provide for bus bays and a parking lane; establishing new railway stations in activity centres along with provide bus stops to encourage inter-modality. If according to the sanitary planner, the building height should be limited to 270 meters above mean sea level. While according to an urban planner, maximum height can be 300 meters, agreement on the lower value shall be made for setting up a non-conflicting rule. Similar limitations may apply in different planning aspects needs to be taken care off. (B) Planning Guidelines for Land Uses Based on the results from land classes allocation, Land Use can be termed as allowed use of available of land for human settlement and economical activities such as industrial, residential, business, transportation, institutional, recreational, or other purposes. An urban planner with group consent can setup guidelines to provide alternative options of housing typologies for different income group, with different gross (and net) densities and residential location and to create homogeneity in building typologies with its surrounding landscape. Also, rules for gross floor space requirement per employee for different sectors like retail, services, industries, etc, additional land allocation to meet the needs to set up basic sector employment space requirements for industries and commercial areas. Guidelines for a hierarchical road network to provide an efficient and convenient accessibility in the region with suitable road geometry and parking facilities according to the use such as industry/commercial centre or a residential area can be setup. 2.1.4- Evaluation Criteria, Utility Values & Weights After an agreement amongst the planners, evaluation criteria (which reflects the suitability of certain natural conditions, location attributes, infrastructural facilities, etc.) to meet their requirements are set, and are assigned utility values and weights. This evaluation procedure is separately repeated into land classes and land uses. To allow utility assignment for each criterion, standards are identified. Based on the nature of a criterion, evaluation functions are created to incorporate this continuity by identifying a linear relation between two standards that reflect the decreasing/increasing utility of an indicator inside a range. The collection of the criteria would reflect its weight for a specific land class while the aggregation process would reflect the interrelation among various criteria and the substitution level. For criteria with no substitution, multiplicative aggregation is used while additive aggregation is used for criteria with some substitution. As an example, the criteria of slope and soil typology are used to define areas of high landslide risk. Although specific soil typologies indicate a higher potential for landslides, the absence of high slopes could mean that the effects of a soil structure no longer play any role. For such a situation, it is more appropriate to use the multiplicative aggregation to reflect the lack of substitution between the criteria. In other instances, the multiplicative aggregation can not be used since it might produce erroneous representation in cases where bad performance on one criterion could be substituted by a higher performance on another. Weight used in additive aggregation reflects the importance of various criteria in a specific context. (A) Areas for Agricultural Processes For the CSA, two criterions; soil typology and slope, were used to evaluate areas for agricultural processes, based upon an assumption that the utility of one can not be substituted by the other. For agriculture, bad soils on good slopes are equivalent to good soils on extremely steep slopes. For soil types identified in CSA region, varying utilities that reflect their respective fertilities were assigned. Slope was identified as extremely suitable in the range up to 5 % and absolutely not suitable above 15 % and linearly decreasing in-between. (B) Areas for Natural Processes Similarly, areas for natural processes shall be subdivided into five sub-classes: Natural Habitat Protection Areas, Flood Retention Basins, Air Flow Corridors, Groundwater Protection Areas and Cold Air Generation Areas. An Environmental Planner identifies sites sensitive as per the first three categories. (C) Areas for Human Settlement Activities Based on identification of areas through aerial photos or satellite images, they can be subdivided as urban redevelopment , urban infill and urban transition . 2.1.5- Conflict Matrix Now, based on planning guidelines, utility maps can be generated for every land class Overlaying of these maps shows the conflict areas amongst the land classes and sub classes. Urban infill and urban redevelopment areas are already used land and thus can be considered as non-conflicting with each other or the rest. But for the conflicts amongst urban transition, agricultural process and natural process, a conflict resolution matrix (as shown in Table 1) is therefore required to solve the conflicts that may arise. The utilities for each land class are initially classified into three subclasses as high, medium and low; and compared with the corresponding utility value in the conflicting land class. The pair wise comparison between utilities is resolved as indicated by the matrix and the land class is then assigned to the area in question.  2.2- Land classification Map Based on application of the conflict matrix, and obtaining individual areas for different land classes is possible according to the needs for the region into consideration. Now using the forecasted population in different income groups, and respective family size in a region according to a survey, housing requirements (number of dwelling units, gross density and hence the area required) can be found out. Rough holding capacity of each land use type can then be calculated and compared to the available area. Land Classification Map finally gives way to propose alternatives for growth patterns based on the areas classified for human settlement and activities. The basic idea for deciding the best growth direction for future expansion should be based on adequate supplied of vacant land, compatibility with existing growth pattern, proximity to the main transportation network and existing residential areas. 2.3- Structural Plan A Structural Plan includes integration planning guidelines as mentioned in section 2.1.3. Now areas of potential developments in various sectors can be found out, based on the basic idea for deciding the best growth direction for future expansion, vacant land availability, compatibility with existing growth pattern, proximity to the main transportation network and existing residential areas making the development possible with lesser expenditure. To get an idea for the new job opportunities to be provided in the CSA and forecast for employment can be done by various methods like extrapolation of trends, Delphi like judgemental approach, joint economic-population approach, etc. (Kaiser 1995). Based on the planning aspects, assumptions on how the employment would be distributed sector wise, new opportunities required in each sector while using space required per employee in each sector area required by an industrial setup can be calculated. Equal importance to neighbourhood shopping has been provided depending upon the regions economy and culture. Though planning is for a small CSA, the macro economical aspect for GDP calculation purpose (using region’s Lorenz Curve, if available) needs to be planned for MMI region which has to be then narrowed down to the CSA. Also, the transportation planning needs to take care of the connectivity of the housing and commercial activity centres, leisure activity centres, in the CSA, inline with the plan of the MMI region. A forecast for car availibility in CSA is calculated as a base on the GDP (using relative income) of the whole MMI, and plotting it on the world car availability curve according to GDP of different countries. Housing typology and their respective relative income along with car availability would give an idea for parking space requirements in housing areas (add a buffer for visitors). Location of bus stops and rails stations, time tables for bus and rails, can also be found out and optimised. Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has been performed to identify the environmental, social and economic impacts of a project prior to decision-making to find an optimum solution by reduce adverse impacts, shape projects to suit the local environment. Finally, Phasing Plan can be outlined for better land administration. When planning is for 20 years, the first phase plan (Year 01 – 06), may address the basic need for housing and social infrastructure, and starts forming a base for the beginning of the second phase (Year 07 – 11). The second phase plan may include new development of commercial and employment area, green network along with the road network and urban transition. The third phase plan (12 – 20) should focus on approaching to the overall planned land use. 3- Integrated Planning using GIS & Other Computational Tools This section shows the applications of various computer based tools to convert theoretical planning into digital one. In this case study, GIS based tool ArcView 3.2 was used as a major application and output from all others were integrated to it for better understanding of planning aspects. Utility of land in a given area for individual land classes can be identified as shown in Table 2, and can be expressed with multiplicative aggregation S* St.   Figure 2- Land Classification Map Integration of GIS data with transportation planning software VISUM was used to forecast the future traffic demand (using origin destination in the region), identification of problems points (in terms of saturation of the road section), effects of alternatives applied, mode choice, etc. VISUM also serves for input and processing of current data and also for modelling and assessment of the traffic flows of the current state condition, and for forecast and evaluation calculations along with display of results. Figure 2 shows the traffic situation on the transportation network for year 2020 if no changes in the network are made, along with an improved situation (in the inset) with almost no network saturation for year 2020. Figure 2- Status Quo Transportation Network in VISUM (Inset: Improved network) VISUM can also provide coverage area of a selected activity centre in different time span by for a given transportation network. Such an output can be transferred to GIS tool to check the area covered and hence the population served with iterations to find an optimum location for a given facility to ideally serve maximum population. Now to achieve sustainable development of the CSA, EIA has to be performed. For this case study, noise pollution from transportation was only checked. For Road Transport, Handbook Emission Factors for Road Transport (HBEFA) v2.1 considering factors like road geometry, HGV share, traffic volume and average speed to find out noise levels. While to calculate noise pollution from railways, an online calculator provided by Deutscher Arbeitsring für Lärmbekämpfung e.V. (DAL 2004) based on factors such as no. of trains per hour, share of trains with disk brakes, train length, average speed, carriageway etc. and matching the emission threshold values for noise pollution due to rail traffic. According to DIN (1987) standards, Emission guidelines values vary for day time and night time, and also for different road categories. For example, a motorway (app. 70dB) would have higher limits compared to an urban corridor or a collector road (app. 50dB). Problem points can be identified and mitigation measures such as erection of side walls to act as buffers can be suggested or else iteration of planning from the scratch needs to be applied. 4- Further Research The application of tools based on GIS, transportation planning and other computational tools, a balanced integrated plan for development of region can be created to lead it to a sustainable growth in future. It needs proper application of theoretical application, good understanding of GIS tools and transferring the theory into computational terms. Other tools/models for checking effects of air pollution due to traffic or industries, soil or water pollution, etc. can also be incorporated. References
|