Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Urban Applications
IMPROVING LAND ADMINISTRATION
In many countries around the world, cadastral records, planning documents,
and planning maps needed for land administration are spread among vari-
ous agencies. Collecting and comparing documents can require a great deal
of time, and problems and conf licts often arise. Many GIS applications have
been developed to assist governments with land administration. These appli-
cations must take the existing geographic representations into account, but
also determine what are common agreements and disagreements between
the government agencies. By developing a geographic representation for the
GIS that helps facilitate interactions and f lags possible problems for resolu-
tion, the GIS can greatly improve government land administration.
Developing cartographic representations that accurately indicate different
planning zones and ownerships, and that help administrators understand
the problems, are critical to the success of these applications. Through this
support and using information technology to improve the accuracy and
speed of processing, land administration can make important decisions
much quicker.
MODELING URBAN GROWTH
The rapid increase in urban populations around the world (more than 50%
of the world's population now live in cities) leads to a number of health,
social, and environmental problems. To help administrators and politicians
develop a better understanding of this growth, research projects modeling
the process of urban growth have helped predict the future growth of areas.
These studies require very careful consideration of geographic representa-
tion issues. For instance, people will tend to migrate to areas with good
transportation to employment possibilities, but these areas often have the
highest rents. Many people will look for nearby alternatives that help them
save on housing costs, but are still close to transportation. The development
of an area can accumulate and lead to very fast growth as more people
choose a place to live, more transportation is to be provided, more people
come, and housing costs increase. After a certain point people will move to
new nearby locations, starting the cycle over again in a new place. The geo-
graphic representation of these interactions requires detailed modeling of
the numerous political, social, and economic factors that inf luence the pro-
cess of urban growth. The detail of the geographic representation is also
important for assessing the accuracy of the model and assuring that the
goals of the modeling are met. The cartographic representation of these
models needs to take conventions for mapping an area into account to assure
that people can understand the results of a model. See Plate 12 for an exam-
ple of a field model.
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