Generation of a Consistent Spatial Database for a Land Use Planning Project in South Eastern China (silup)

The joint German-Chinese research project SILUP (Sustainable Integrated Land Use Planning) aims in developing and implementing a strategy for sustainable land use planning in a rapidly developing study area south of Nanjing, Jiangsu province, China. Because of the rapid development of the site there is a high pressure for land to be transferred from agricultural use into industrial use. Sustainable development in this context means simultaneously respecting the ecological and socio-economical value of land, judging it and finding the best suited areas to fulfil the demands. For the ecological side, water management aspects as well as biodiversity and soil aspects are of importance. Areas with important functions for groundwater recharge, surface water runoff, biotopes and the like have to be identified and protected from land use change. The output of the SILUP system is a categorized map which shows land use planners, where agriculturally used areas can be a target for further development. This paper presents the integration of various data sources into a consistent spatial database which was the working fundament of all institutes participating in the SILUP project. The emphasis of the project work was not set in the highest possible degree of automation for each task but on the generation of a consistent database which is usable by all project partners with their strongly different demands on accuracy and attribution. The SILUP project could be finished successfully and was highly acknowledged by the German BMBF (Federal Ministry for Education and Research) and the UNESCO. * Corresponding author.