LAND SUITABILITY ANALYSIS

LOCATE SCHOOLS IN PALANPUR

Submitted By: Shivangi Ajmera

2018PAR5079

Submitted To: Dr. Niruti Gupta

Subject: Application of GIS
Date: 09-05-2019
CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION

2. WHY GIS IS IMPORTANT IN URBAN PLANNING

3. WHAT IS GIS USED FOR IN URBAN PLANNING?

4. GIS BASED LAND SUITABILITY ANALYSIS

5. WEIGHTED SITE SELECTION AND SUITABILITY ANALYIS

6. HOW TO USE WEIGHTED SITE SELECTION IN GIS

7. WHEN TO USE WEIGHTED SITE SELECTION IN GIS

8. EXAMPLE: SUITABILITY ANALYIS FOR LOCATION OF

SCHOOLS IN PALANPUR
INTRODUCTION
In recent decades, cities around the world have been facing the issue of urban growth
as a result of population and economic growth. Urban growth gradually leads to the
decline of natural and rural lands, and it affects the ecosystem in general. Given this
situation, strategies and policies are needed to address and pre-empt this
phenomenon before negative effects on the biosphere begin to increase. These
strategies and policies may be long-term plans at the local, regional, national, and
international levels, such as population and economic strategies and plans. However,
these strategies and policies may also come in the form of a technology that monitors
and controls urban growth phenomenon. Examples of these techniques are remote
sensing (RS) and geographic information systems (GIS). Urban development has
become a global issue, resulting in the heightened concern planners and decision
makers over the future impacts on the ecosystem. Simulating urban growth patterns
has become essential to ecosystem protection and sustainable development. In
addition, the complex structure of the urban environment must be understood to
simulate urban dynamics correctly. Urban growth simulation needs to consider the
chronology of the issue of sprawl and wide historical information to understand spatial
and temporal relationships accurately. Hence, obtaining the true knowledge of growth
factors that affect future land uses can be improved using simulation techniques, such
as land suitability analysis. Understanding the spatial and temporal changes, as well
as all effective elements, is facilitated using remote sensing (RS) and geographic
information system (GIS) techniques.
WHY GIS IS IMPORTANT IN URBAN PLANNING
Cities are systems of tremendous, ever-evolving complexity. Responsibly guiding an
area’s development requires spatial information that’s robust, nuanced and constantly
updated, as well as the problem-solving skills to apply that information. This challenge
has made geographic information science and technology (GIST) invaluable to urban
planners. Spatial data points the way to improving quality of life and building
sustainable communities, while geographic information science (GIS) professionals
use spatial thinking to transform that data into actionable insight and solutions.

WHAT IS GIS USED FOR IN URBAN PLANNING?

Professionals apply GIS in urban planning for analysis, modelling and visualization.
By processing geospatial data from satellite imaging, aerial photography and remote
sensors, users gain a detailed perspective on land and infrastructure. As urban
populations grow and spread, the importance of GIS lies in its ability to pull together
the vast amounts of information necessary to balance competing priorities and solve
complicated problems, such as optimizing new building placement or determining the
feasibility of a waste disposal site.

These powerful tools help planners understand the needs of densely populated area,
but they also adapt to examining smaller towns and even informal settlements. The
ability to run a variety of queries and analytics on GIS data means experts can evaluate
how new construction will fit in with existing infrastructure and meet regulatory
demands. Users may spot opportunities for improved resource use, identifying the
best locations to harvest solar, wind or geothermal energy.

GIS technology empowers urban planners with enhanced visibility into data. They
monitor fluctuations over time, evaluate the feasibility of proposed projects and predict
their effects on the environment. GIS software can also show all relevant stakeholders
exactly what the changes on the ground will look like to help them make better
decisions. For example, GIS software may generate visualizations of an area’s current
environmental conditions and allow users to draw comparisons between the
anticipated results of proposed development plans.
Urban planners in both the public and private sector employ data-driven methods to
address a wide array of issues that have long-term implications for communities and
the surrounding landscape.

Some of the common applications for GIS include:

 Review and analysis of plans for development.
 Checks on regulatory compliance.
 Review of environmental impact.
 Preservation of historic sites.
 Regional planning beyond the borders of a city or town.
 Mapping the delivery of utilities and planning for service interruptions.

By performing land use analyses, planners can guide new developments to areas
that are less prone to damage from natural disasters. Synthesizing geographic
information with financial data might lead to revitalizing an urban area in need of new
businesses.
GIS BASED LAND SUITABILITY ANALYSIS
The selection of suitable site is based upon a specific set of local criteria. The
characteristics of a site (e.g., present land- use, slopes, water availability, distance to
employment, development codes, geology, geomorphology, etc.) influence its
suitability for a specific land- use type. To assess the overall suitability a scoring and
weighting system is applied to various aspects of suitability.

Land suitability is the process of understanding existing land qualities and factors,
which will determine the location of a particular activity. The purpose of selecting
potential areas for residential development depends upon the relationship of different
factors, lie location of available sites, extent of the area, accessibility, etc, and site
association factors like slope, soil, etc. the analysis may also determine how those
factors will fit into the design process to evaluate land suitability.

For any suitability analysis, appropriate base data is required (generally satellite data
or air- photos, topographic maps and thematic maps and field data). The different
land qualities, which can be considered for suitability modelling are, present land-
use/ land cover, slope, proximity of transportation network, flood hazard,
groundwater condition etc. the characteristics of a site influence its suitability for
further urban development. To assess the overall suitability a scoring and weighting
system is applied to the various aspects of suitability. Suitable sites are found out by
adding all layers which are affecting suitability.

Land-use suitability analysis is a very important task faced by city planners and
managers, the aim being to identify the most appropriate spatial pattern for future
land use. In recent years, land-use suitability analysis has been applied to the
assessment of agricultural land, determination of land habitats for animal and plant
species, landscape evaluation and planning, and regional planning and envi-
ronmental impact assessment. Land-use suitability analysis methods may be
categorized as overlay mapping methods, Multi-criteria Evaluation (MCE) methods,
and Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods. Overlay mapping is easy to undertake and is
routinely applied in land-use suitability analysis for urban development, but has
shortcomings such as inappropriate standardization of suitability maps, and untested
or unverified assumptions of in- dependence among suitability criteria. To overcome
these drawbacks, overlay mapping is often implemented alongside other land-use
suitability analysis methods for urban development.
WEIGHTED SITE SELECTION AND SUITABILITY ANALYIS

Site selection or suitability analysis is a type of analysis used in GIS to determine the
best place or site for something. Potential sites used in suitability analysis can
include the location of a new hospital, store or school among many others. When
performing site selection analysis users must set various criteria from which the GIS
software can rate the best or ideal sites. Site selection analysis can be performed
with vector or raster data but one of the most widely used types of site selection,
weighted site selection, uses raster data.

Weighted site selection analysis allows users to rank raster cells and assign a
relative importance value to each layer (ESRI). The result is a suitability surface
which ranks potential sites from 1 to 5. Sites with a value of 1 are least suitable and
those with a value of 5 are most suitable. Weighted site selection is an important site
selection method because it includes options for viewing next-best sites (those with a
value of 4) should the ideal sites not work.

HOW TO USE WEIGHTED SITE SELECTION IN GIS

In order to use weighted site selection there is a standard workflow that should be
followed. This workflow usually begins with defining a problem or criteria such as
locating some potential sites for a new ski resort. The next step is to gather data and
create raster surfaces to be used in the analysis. This step is followed by
reclassifying the layers, weighting them and then overlaying the output layers with
background information such as a map of topography to see the best potential sites.

Reclassification is important in weighted site selection because it is used to simplify

the interpretation of raster data by changing a single input value into a new output
value (ESRI). It can also be used to group ranges of cell values into a single value.
For example you can assign a value of 1 to a set of values that range from 1-50 and
2 to values that range from 51-100. This simplifies weighted site selection because
different types of raster data will have different values based on what they show
(ESRI). By using reclassification they are all based on the same ranking scheme that
can be used to compare and rank the least and most suitable sites.
Weighting layers is another critical step in weighted site selection because it allows
the user to place varying levels of importance on different factors such as proximity
to a major highway and sun exposure (ESRI). Weights are usually determined by a
panel of experts on the subject being tested and they are based on specific criteria
for the analysis. Weights are assigned as different percentages that must add up to
100%.

WHEN TO USE WEIGHTED SITE SELECTION IN GIS

Weighted site selection or suitability analysis is best to use with raster data when a
user needs to find a site based on a number of criteria such as the following
problems explained by the ESRI Virtual Campus course “Using Raster Data for Site
Selection”:

 When one needs to find the rankings of suitability for cells in a raster dataset
 When one needs to find next-best site options in addition to finding an ideal
site
 When data has a distinct boundaries and other levels of certainty
 When the user determines where something will go based on specified criteria
 When the user wants to rank different criteria as more or less important in
finding an ideal site
EXAMPLE: SUITABILITY ANALYIS FOR LOCATION OF SCHOOLS
IN PALANPUR
Following steps need to be taken for suitability analysis using ArcGIS:
STEP 1
a. Add Palanpur Folder having all the files required to be added onto GIS
b. Open school_geo
river_geo
roads_geo
vil_bound_geo
STEP 2
a. Import the “jpeg image” : Banaskatha. A district map opens
b. We have to spatially adjust the map using “ Spatial Adjustment Toolbar”
c. Add vector files in the geo- referenced image
STEP 3
a. Open all the spatially adjusted files in to a new workspace.

b. Toolbox Spatial Analyst Tools Distance Euclidean Distance

c. A dialogue box opens up. Drag and drop school_geo shape file. Click OK
 d. A new layer is added EucDist_shp2

STEP 4
a. Open Arc Toolbox Reclass Reclassify
b. Drag and drop EucDist_shp2
 c. Click on Classify Histogram
d. Change classes from 10 to 3
e. Change the old values and new values
0………………. not suitable
100…………… completely suitable

f. Output Raster New Folder “Reclass” school_reclass.tif OK

g. Remove ‘EucDist_shp2’
STEP 5
Repeat the same process for roads.

STEP 6
Repeat the same process for rivers.
STEP 7
Toolbox Spatial Analyst Tools Map Algebra Raster Calculate
Specify the Output file “school.tif”

Let us take all the layers equal and give weightage 0.33
Click OK

A new layer is created “school.tif”

 This could be adjusted.
Right Click on school.tif Properties
Symbology Classification
Method Equal Intervals

It is giving us, where the schools can be located.

From this we can understand where and how the infrastructure facilities need to be
located in any geographical setting.