GIS based urban planning documentation management system

Urban planning is an activity for optimal land usage organisation design according to a number of functional criteria. Making decision in urban planning depends on various factors including environment characteristics, desired aim, present infrastructure, buildings and previously made decisions. Urban planning relies on knowledge of human experts in various areas and also on huge volumes of data describing previous state in area which is considered. These data include previous decisions in forms of numeric tables, textual descriptions and various maps. All available data are kept in the Information Documentation Centre (INDOC) in the Urban Institute. The great amounts of data make planning process difficult and a lot of time is spent in order to find desired data. This paper presents GINIS-INDOC documentation management system for urban planning agencies. The system is based on GINIS, an extensible object oriented geographic information system toolkit for inexpensive hardware platforms. The GINIS supplies user interface functions, input, storage, retrieval and display of data about graphical objects. The system core is spatial database which integrates spatial representation of area affected by plan with other related data (numerical, textual and graphical). Scanned raster maps used in GINIS as visual contexts significantly improve the system’s performances. This enables simple and easy usage of system and pre-preparation of database is not necessary. Since the spatial database is implemented using relational database, data acquisition from present digital forms (word processors, spreadsheets) is very simple while the GINIS enables spatial data input and searching. This system makes simple and quick access to all necessary data trough the combinations of spatial and alphanumeric queries. GINIS-INDOC system is implemented in Windows environment using ODBC mechanism for access to database. Client server architecture enables concurrent usage of data by a number of users. Links with commercial CAD programs currently used for plan and map production is achieved through DDE mechanism. Thus, these programs are fully integrated into the GINIS-INDOC application. Advantages of this solution are using GIS technology on inexpensive hardware platforms, without a need for expensive GIS software. Scaleable, object oriented architecture, enables step-by-step transition to a full GIS solution by introducing new spatial objects and methods for their manipulation. The obtained results, and especially the possibility of quick utilization of this system, have positively influenced the further development of GIS technology.