Application of Geographic Information Science

Question: Discuss about the Application of Geographic Information Science. Answer: Introduction: The increasing magnitude and dynamic nature of urbanization has created an enormous burden on the companies responsible for the planning and management of urban areas. Geographical information science (GIS) has opened up better opportunities for these urban development organizations to understand the regional planning situation and plan the building of house and roads effectively (Scholten and Stillwell 2013). For the urban planning and management companies, the core objective is to develop urban planning and contribute to the development of compact and sustainable cities. The geographical information system and the geographical information technology have the most vital part to play in this spatial planning and support decision. GIS has been used for urban planning and development since late 1960s (Biljecki et al. 2015). Most of the early housing and planning developers used to depend on the computer mapping having few analytical functions (Malczewski and Rinner 2015). With the decl ining cost of the hardware along with the improvement in the data structure and algorithm, it has made GIS more affordable and easier to use. The process is less time consuming and is more dependable (La Rosa and Privitera 2013). An analysis of the importance of the GIS in the urban planning and housing shall be carried on in this part of the study. Discussion: The beginning of 1980 has seen the increasing number of installations in the urban and regional development (Scholten and Stillwell 2013). The governments of major developed countries have been found to make the use of these technologies in mapping and development of the urban regions. The urban planners could no longer think of planning the urban or the regional areas without the use of the GIS (La Rosa and Privitera 2013). With the help of GIS technology, it has become easier for engineers and the urban developers to plan the region accordingly. The necessary information is important for major decision making in the urban planning. Other information systems for urban planning include decision support system, data base management system and the expert system (Scholten and Stillwell 2013). However, if GIS is considered, it is the most useful and influential information system to be used for the development and planning (Malczewski and Rinner 2015). In fact, in the recent time it has been evident that the planners are extracting data from their databases and incorporating the same in the GIS to use it for the purpose of planning the urban regions. GIS help in visualization, spatial analysis and the spatial modeling for the purpose of urban planning. With the help of proper information, the urban planners can easily extract useful information through spatial query. In this respect, mapping plays the most vital role as a tool for visualization. GIS has helped in improved mapping that has given better access to maps and improved map currency (La Rosa and Privitera 2013). This in turn has lead to reduced storage cost and more effective thematic mapping. The developers can get greater efficiency in the retrieval of information that is important for the planning of urban regions. In fact, GIS has opened up the opportunity for better communication with the public and the staff. The planners can access the information with a greater speed for the planning application process (Malczewski and Rinner 2015). GIS is used in different stages of urban planning. GIS when integrated with the remote sensing, has helped in collecting useful info rmation about land and other environmental information. With the help of remote sensing images, the developers can easily detect the right use of the land and the whole urban area. The use of GIS and the remote sensing has helped in observing and investigating the dynamics of the territorial phenomenon. For instance, the developers can easily get acknowledged of the various situations like soil degradation, land cover pattern, urban sprawl and others (La Rosa and Privitera 2013). This way, the developers shall be able to understand any kind of issue related to the land so that they can build up new house or other dwellings at the right place. Urban housing could not be effective and well designed enough if the GIS and the other information system would not have been in used (Jones 2014). Volunteered with other devices like the open data, spatial data infrastructures and the geo portals have given the opportunity to the developers to trace down the particular area and carry out the construction on the basis of the position of the land. In fact, GIS not only help in determining the condition of the land but it helps in storing and manipulating the social and econ omic data of a particular city or region. With the help of GIS, the major area of conflicts can be determined and if required the work can be put on halt as well (Malczewski and Rinner 2015). Thus, this process helped in the remote sensing and other environmental information of the particular region. Conclusion: The analysis has helped to understand the importance of GIS in urban development. It has been evident that the needs of urbanization and housing in the recent time have changed a lot. In this dynamic situation, the GIS have helped to locate the area and the spatial areas of a particular region. The visual representation and the remote sensing have helped the urban development organizations to understand the actual scenario of the particular region and housing can be done. It has also been found that with the help of GIS, communication has become easier that has improved the means of construction and development of urban regions. It can be easily said that with the help of the GIS and other information system, the modeling and the projection system have improved by many folds. This has helped the infrastructure developers to carry out their business activities effectively without much hustle. Further development shall help in the betterment of the urban development and the infrastruct ure building of the housing and urban building. This will automatically help in meeting the future demands of the population of the world. References: Biljecki, F., Stoter, J., Ledoux, H., Zlatanova, S. and ltekin, A., 2015. Applications of 3D city models: State of the art review.ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information,4(4), pp.2842-2889. Jones, C.B., 2014.Geographical information systems and computer cartography. Routledge. La Rosa, D. and Privitera, R., 2013. Characterization of non-urbanized areas for land-use planning of agricultural and green infrastructure in urban contexts.Landscape and Urban Planning,109(1), pp.94-106. Longley, P.A., Goodchild, M.F., Maguire, D.J. and Rhind, D.W., 2015.Geographic information science and systems. John Wiley Sons. Malczewski, J. and Rinner, C., 2015.Multicriteria decision analysis in geographic information science. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. Scholten, H.J. and Stillwell, J. eds., 2013.Geographical information systems for urban and regional planning(Vol. 17). Springer Science Business Media.