CC BY
9
УДК 528.4
Ингольф Бурштедде Германия
E-mail: ibu@gmx.com
СОВРЕМЕННОЕ ГРАДОСТРОИТЕЛЬСТВО НА ОСНОВЕ ОПТИМАЛЬНЫХ ГИС ТЕХНОЛОГИЙ
Ingolf Burstedde Germany
MODERN TOWN PLANNING REQUIRES MODERN INSTRUMENTS. HOW TO IMPLEMENT A USEFUL GIS IN A MUNICIPALITY
SUMMARY
In former times town planning was defined as "allocation of adequate space for living and industry". Nowadays it has become a much more complicated task. Modern town planning has to deal with the sustainable development of a town with all its spatial and social structures. Planning concepts have to be created. The public and private interest has to be balanced. Conflicts have to be minimised. Modern town planning, as a public institution, has to arrange and control all kind of building activities. In summary it has to protect and develop the urbanistic shape of a town under various aspects.
These challenging duties and responsibilities can only be achieved with a very good knowledge of the town in detail. Geographical, social, infrastructural, demographical and lots of other data have to be made available and to be processed.
This article will show that a GIS can be a very suitable instrument to handle all these different data in a professional way. A GIS cannot replace missing or outdated data, of course. It cannot solve the problems of modern town planning by itself. But it contributes a lot to identify the important coherences in town planning purposes and to find the right solutions and decisions.
It will also show that the implementation of a GIS has to be well organised and supported by the decision makers. Possible obstacles and difficulties in practice are described and interpreted.
1. Introduction
Town planning is an interdisciplinary task involving all fields, sectors, branches and disciplines of the responsible institution, mostly a municipality. Architects, special town planners, geographers, engineers and geodesists (of course) are integrated in planning teams. Nearly all departments of a municipality (For example: departments for cadastre, infrastructure, economical development, environment protection, citizen's information, taxes etc.) have to deliver their contributions for town planning tasks.
But this data delivery is not a one way system. In fact all disciplines need data from each other for their special tasks and responsibilities as for example:
- Issuing of construction permits
- Calculating property tax based on size of land and type of land use
- Calculating rent for real estates of the municipality
- Identifying, planning and maintaining public areas
- Registering properties of the municipality
- Setting up a cadastre of emissions
- Citizens information
- Planning inner urban infrastructure
- Setting up emergency plans
- and many others
In this context there is a permanent multipurpose data exchange between the different stakeholders.
Various data from different sources have to be brought together, to be processed and to be made available for the different users. About 80% of all decisions in a municipality are "spatially related". This shows the necessity for an information system handling the variety of data in an efficient and useful way.
Is a GIS the right instrument to give support to these problems? What is a GIS in fact? How does it work? How to get it? How to use it? What are the important factors to be considered?
2. Basic considerations
A GIS is an IT-based system consisting of hardware, software and data. It's used to capture, maintain, analyse and present spatial data. This sort of "geoinformation" is a very important base for planning, documenting and deciding in the different fields mentioned above.
The relation between the cost for hardware, software and data is about 1: 5: 25 showing very clearly that the most valuable component in an information system is the data. Data have to be up-to-date, informative and precise.
Data are kept/stored only once in a GIS in contrast to a normal CAD-system.
Everybody uses the same (up-to-date) information. There is no redundancy of data. Alphanumerical and graphical data are linked together in the data base. All data can be accessed by the different users via network (e.g. intranet).
On international geodetic fairs or exhibitions like the GEOSIBIR in Novosibirsk or the INTERGEO in changing cities of Germany lots of software products combined with various hardware components are offered; different concepts are presented and discussed. In fact there are uncountable means for setting up a GIS.
For the user, however, the emphasis in this context is not the hardware, the soft-ware or the instruments. The main problems for him are: data, organisation, money, time, and manpower.
3. Preparatory work
The implementation of a GIS for town planning purposes with its complex field of different needs, activities, participants and users is not quickly done. There are a lot of agreements, commitments and regulations to be defined before the system can be installed.
3.1 Data
As already said before, the most valuable component of a GIS is the data.
First of all the existing data have to be collected, structured and analysed. What about the data quality? What about their up-to-dateness? In which format are they available? How to transform them? What data are missing respectively not available? Who are the data owners?
What data will be needed for the future tasks? How to get these data? What is the graphical basis for the future GIS? Is it a cadastral map with the single parcel as the basic information? Or another existing map?
At the end of all these considerations a data model for all (spatially) related objects, their relationships and characteristics has to be defined like in Fig. 1 roughly illustrated:
Data Modelling
Data
acquisition
Abstraction
Geographic Data
Describes Structure and Content
Fig. 1
3.2 Business processes
Beside the data the business processes have to be evaluated and described. What data are going from where to where (data flow)? What processes should be supported / automated by the GIS? What are the desired software functionalities of the future GIS?
Fig.2 and Fig.3 are illustrating typical town planning processes in a municipality. For setting up the GIS it is important to know what kind of data are coming from where, are being processed from whom and are going to which
address. Many of these business processes can be standardised and automated because the workflow is always the same.
The dotted lines indicate the GIS-relevant data flow. Here the planned GIS can simplify or support the indicated activity in a sustainable way.
The first illustrated process (Fig.2) shows what happens when a citizen or his architect comes to the municipality in order to get more detailed information about a certain piece of land. His questions are: Is it possible to construct a house here? Are there any planned roads or other constraints? Are there cables or water pipes in the ground? The process is called "General Plan Request":
Fig.3 shows a typical work process of a so-called section "Microplanning" being responsible for the design of public areas in the town:
3.3 Rules and regulations
The third part of necessary activities concerning the preparatory work for the implementation of a GIS is the topic "rules and regulations".
The basics for capturing, maintaining, storing, analysing and presenting the spatially related data have to be defined. The rights and duties of the different users have to be described. Who is allowed to read the data? Who is obliged to update them? Who is allowed to change them? Normally the concerned department has the duty to maintain and update the data in its own field of responsibility. For example, the department of property registration is responsible for the parcel number and the cadastral zone, whereas the department for town planning is responsible for parameters of the possible land use.
An agreement on the use of IT - standards has to be found.
The basics for the access and use of geoinformation under consideration of data protection have to be formulated.
All necessary data have to be made available, technically and legally.
The data collection, -selection and -preparation for the initial input has to be organised. Usually the inexperienced user tends to collect and store all data he can get. But all data, being stored in the GIS, have to be updated permanently in the future. So the question is more: "What is only needed"?
4. Obstacles and difficulties
The implementation of a GIS for town planning purposes takes time and needs
a good concept covering all the different interests and requirements. It will take years of preparation, data collection and data input until it works in a satisfying way. It will never be "finished". The data have to be updated all the time. New requirements have to be programmed. Additional functionalities have to be added whenever needed. A GIS is a living system.
Setting up a GIS in practice is not always successful. Why? What are the main obstacles or difficulties? Mainly it is not the hardware or the software, although just these factors are often made responsible for failures or delays. The real reasons are often:
4.1 Lack of commitment from the decision makers
A complex team work with many members of different departments and with a different background is necessary to fulfil the described requirements. A common sense of cooperation is needed. The decision makers have to commit themselves and to give their honest inner support in any way. They have to give the necessary time to the team members for working out the different duties described in chapter 3.
A considerable amount of work capacity and common understanding in all levels is needed. This should not be underestimated.
4.2 Lack of organisation
The problematic of coordination and communication can be solved best, when the GIS implementation is handled in a project organisation structure. A project is defined as an "important, temporary and interdisciplinary task". It is handled within or beside the normal organisation of the user's administration. The different project functions with their specific duties and responsibilities have to be clearly defined.
Mainly there are four different project functions:
- The decision makers are normally members of the so called project board. This board supervises the project and gives the necessary support to the other project members.
- The project manager coordinates the different activities and is responsible for the work progress. He/she has to report to the project board regularly.
- The project team consist of the specialists for the different disciplines. It has to work out the different tasks described in chapter 3 under the direction of the project manager.
- For some specific tasks (e.g. initial data analyse, data modelling, software procedures, project management etc.) external consultants are temporary integrated in the project organisation.
4.3 High costs for data capturing and updating
The costs for data capturing and updating in comparison to the costs for hard and software are always underestimated (compare: chapter 2.).
The user has to be aware of his capacities concerning money and manpower before he starts a challenging GIS project.
4.4 No data model and no standards for data exchange
Data modelling and definition of the standards for data exchange are indispensable premises for a successful GIS.
4.5 Different ownership of data
When setting up a GIS it often happens that the needed data are coming from different sources (= different owners).
For example: The planning data are coming from different departments of the municipality; the cadastral data are coming from a state agency and the data concerning the underground networks are coming from private energy companies.
It depends on the specific situation how such a problem can be solved. If a professional electronic data exchange cannot be established, a second best way has to be found howsoever it looks like.
5. Conclusions
A good working Geo Information System is probably the best possible instrument to support the tasks of modern town planning. The impact is challenging but not a mystery. A good team, a well organised planning and enough time are the best premises to achieve a successful realisation.
© Mнгопb$ Eypwmedde, 2009
