Course: 6 Months Post Graduate Program in GIS & Remote Sensing (Urban and Rural Development Planning.)

APPLICATION OF GIS IN URBAN AND RURAL PLANNING.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TOOLS IN URBAN PLANNING

  • Raster clipping tool extracts out the study area from the raster dataset based on an input bounding extent. The input can be a toposheet, satellite imagery, Digital Elevation Model or any raster data.
  • Image classification tools categorize the land use and land cover of the selected area into required number of classes. It gives a better visualization of the type of land use and land cover from a multi spectral data or any other raster data.
  • Field calculator helps in acquiring the areal extent of each of the classes of a classified image which makes it easier in finding out the change in land use land cover from a two different time period dataset of an area taking the pixel count of each of the classes and the cell size.
  • Intersect tool extracts out the common features from the inputs that overlap s one on the other. It is a useful tool for detecting the changes out of the input data which gets displayed on the viewer with its unique identity of change.
  • Georeferencing tool assigns the ground control points to the raster data so that it gets placed in the correctly as per the real world location. A georeferenced data can be helpful for the planners in accurately positioning the topographical features according to the correct transformation or geographic coordinate system.
  • Digitization tools are the simplest way of showing the land use land cover by extracting out the features from a raster data in form of point, line and polygon features. Digitization tool can be helpful for micro level planning and also for a detailed land use land cover mapping.
  • Surface tools are best for visualising and understanding a type of landform and the parameters which makes it easier in the formulation and execution of a plan according to the type, character and behaviour of the terrain. The tools can also be helpful in make changes to the landform as per the design of the infrastructure.
  • Interpolation tools in urban planning can be applied for quantitative analysis for estimating values or forecasting based on the known values. The tools are also useful for estimating zonal population, household density mapping.
  • Hydrology tools study the hydrological cycle of a selected watershed, its distribution pattern, water level and also the changes that have occurred due to human exploitation. Urban hydrology can be useful for planning land use pattern, identifying the endangered groundwater as well as plan on how to conserve it for future use.