Urban Research: APPLICATION OF REMOTE SENSING AND GIS TECHNIQUE FOR EFFICIENT URBAN PLANNING IN INDIA

Sunday, January 30, 2011

APPLICATION OF REMOTE SENSING AND GIS TECHNIQUE FOR EFFICIENT URBAN PLANNING IN INDIA

Ravindra Kumar Verma, Sangeeta Kumari, and R. K. Tiwary

Urbanization is an index of transformation from traditional rural economies to modern industrial one. It is a progressive concentration of population in urban unit. At the moment, India is one among the country of low level of urbanization. In the last fifty years the population of India has grown two-and-a-half times, but urban India has grown nearly five times. In 2001, 306.9 million Indians (30.5%) were living in nearly 3700 towns and cities spread across the country, and it is expected to increase to over 400 million and 533 million by 2011 and 2021 respectively. At the moment, India is among the counties of low level of urbanization. As a result, most urban settlements are characterized by shortfalls in housing and water supply, urban encroachments in fringe area, inadequate sewerage, traffic congestion, pollution, poverty and social unrest making urban governance a difficult task. The high rate of urban population growth is a cause of concern among India’s urban and town planners for efficient urban planning. For this, the government of India has taken an important initiative to strengthen municipal governance, is the enactment of the Constitution (74thAmendment) Act (CAA), 1992. Through this initiative, an attempt is being made to improve the performance ability of municipalities/urban local bodies, so that they would be able to discharge their duties efficiently in the planning and development of urban areas. However, most studies undertaken to assess the functioning of municipalities in India, point out that the municipalities are confronted with a number of problems, such as non-availability of data, ineffective participation in the decision-making process despite adoption of the policy of reservation, delays in the transfer of funds to the municipalities despite constitution of State Finance Commissions, poor recovery from various tax and non-tax sources despite devolution of power etc. Therefore, there is an urgent need to adopt modern technology of remote sensing which includes both aerial as well as satellite based systems, allow us to collect lot of physical data rather easily, with speed and on repetitive basis, and together with GIS helps us to analyze the data spatially, offering possibilities of generating various options (modeling), thereby optimizing the whole planning process. These information systems also offer interpretation of physical (spatial) data with other socio-economic data, and thereby provide an important linkage in the total planning process and making it more effective and meaningful.