Remote Sensing and Geo-information Systems as Tools for Sustainable Development by Integrated Land Use Planing in China

Sustainability has been discussed for a long time now, not only in the field of land-use planning. Still achieving a sustainable development isn’t easy. The complexity of the nature makes it impossible to pay attention to all the various factors affecting the sustainability. Giving the planning authorities and politicians guidelines in form of useable and understandable information is an important milestone on the way to a sustainable land-use planning. The joint German-Chinese research project SILUP (Sustainable Development by Integrated Land Use Planning) tries to achieve this. This means simultaneously respect the ecological and the socio-economic value of land, judging the different values and finding suitable areas for the development needs. This cannot be achieved by only collecting and delivering as much data as possible. The data has to be classified, generalized and simplified. The information has to presented in an understandable way and it’s not useful if too much single pieces of information are delivered. The project aims for a map containing simplified categories. This categorized map shows the land use planners in an easy and understandable way, which areas should be protected and which area could be used for further development. The first phase of the SILUP project could be finished successfully and was highly acknowledged by the German BMBF (Federal Ministry for Education and Research) and the UNESCO.