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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
In the new millennium Information Technology (IT) creates the environment for every sector of knowledge to get the magic touch of automation. Planning activities can be automated through artificial intelligence of modern Information Technology. The capability of IT is improving very fast, which also increases the prospect of IT in planning. Geographic Information System (GIS) is one of the explorations of that prospect. GIS itself has a great potentiality in Urban and Rural Planning. Planners have to explore and use the potentialities for socio-economical, environmental and physical development. The planning process gradually becomes more complex. Many new challenges arise in front of the planners, to handle this complex situation a larger amount of spatial information have to be processed efficiently and in real time. Many new planning methods and algorithms also have to be invented for this purpose. Plans must be explained scientifically and attractively to make it easily understandable and acceptable to the user. Obviously traditional planning concept and tools could not meet these requirements. But GIS can be a tool for this purpose, which has been decided by many planners.
GIS is a newly introduced tool for the planners of Bangladesh. It became popular in some developed countries from late 60’s (Yeh, 1991). With the improvement of computer hardware and software GIS became a popular tool of planning in Australia, Europe, and North America. After the invention of Personal Computer (PC) GIS has become cheap and popular worldwide even in developing countries. Gradually GIS hardware and software for PC became cheap and its capabilities are increasing, which increase the use of GIS world wide.
The speciality of GIS is its capability to deal with space and linking a vast amount of spatial and attribute data with space, which is one of the major interests of planner as an expert of “optimum use of space”. The well known capabilities of GIS are its Spatial Overlay, Buffering, Connectivity, Shortest Distance calculation, Resource allocation, Route assignment etc. But at present GIS have improved greatly. Now it can be used for storing Digital Elevation data, three dimensional (3D) mapping and analysis like slope, surface runoff, and cut fill analysis. Even GIS can be used for spatial modeling and simulation. The automation capability of GIS is increasing with the time. Modern GIS added much more automation capabilities.
Integration of GIS with Data Base Management System (DBMS), Remote sensing, Aerial photography and Digital surveys equipments has increased its capabilities and accuracy at an unbelievable level. DBMS makes GIS more informative and increase access to information easier and user friendly. Now it can be possible to incorporate data stored in a network computer with GIS. Remote sensing can provide data as image to GIS, which can be analysed using raster based GIS. Recently launched IKONOS satellite can provide sub meter resolution image, which is capable of distinguishing even the roof color of car on road. Aerial photographs also provide image to GIS but comparatively higher resolution than satellite image. The modern digital survey equipment like Global Positioning System (GPS), Echo Sounder and Total Station can provide field survey data directly to the computer and GIS. Real Time Kinematics (RTK) GPS with DGPS method can provide sub meter accurate positional information. Path Finder GPS by Trimble can provide Arc, Polygon and point generic data directly to GIS for digital mapping.
Like other developing countries Bangladesh is lacking of technology. The proper technology cannot be adopted for different reasons. In many cases the scarce resources are wasted due to use it imperfectly. But the resource should be used optimally or in a planned way for socio-economic development of its urban as well as rural areas. GIS can be a powerful tool for that. With the change of environment and information innovation Urban and Rural Planning can only survive and make progress with the support of powerful computer system for handling spatial data like GIS.
But all these technologies have some limitations to analyse data. In GIS there are several data models to store and analyse data. Each data model has its specialities and capacity to analysis data and to produce results. The choice of data model can influence the final result greatly. Planners need to select data model rationally according to particular requirement of an individual project. So there should be a matrix for the planner, which will help them to choose data model and get optimum result.
Khulna is a typical Bangladeshi metropolitan city. It contains all the common characteristics of other cities of Bangladesh. It has distinctive residential, commercial, industrial and mixed use areas so GIS can be used for 3D preparation of urban settings to give a virtual view of cityscape which will help planners to take any decision about future development of the city. Urban services of Khulna City are not evenly distributed at present. GIS can calculate the accessibility of urban services of Khulna City at present and then find out the optimal location of the service. Khulna is popular for jute and newsprint paper mills. The industries are polluting the environment. Raster based GIS can efficiently estimate the intensity of pollutant at important place like residential area. Khulna is very close to coastal area of Bangladesh. The rise of sea level due to cyclone or other cause can increase the water level of Rupsha and Bhairab and flood may occur. Digital Elevation Model of raster based GIS and Triangulated Irregular Network (TIN) can calculate in what condition flood will occur in the city and help to take required measures. There are also many other potentialities of GIS based planning application in Khulna City, implementation of which can ensure a planned healthy urban environment.
1. To find out the prospect of different spatial data models to solve planning problems.
2. To identify the level of efficiency of the data models to solve the problems.
3. To develop efficiency matrix of different data models for different planning applications.
It is already a decade that GIS has been used in this county by the experts of different fields, planners are one of them. Use of vector data model particularly its overlay and buffer technique was prominent in those cases. The use of other data model was rare, although they have great potentialities and special capabilities to solve many problems. One of the objectives of this study is to explain the potentialities and capacity of the data models, so that it can help the planners or any interested groups to understand the capacity of rarely used data models and make it popular to improve the accuracy and expand the use of GIS.
All the data models are not compatible to solve all kinds of problems. In many cases same data model can be used to solve a particular problem but the selection of data model may influence the accuracy of a GIS application. To get optimal result the user of GIS must determine which data model can support the purpose best. The last two objectives of the study are to develop guidelines and a matrix, which will help to select the appropriate data model in planning application.