MalaysiaGIS.com

Source: New Straits Times

The trick to creating a geographic information system (GIS) is to balance all the factors that influence the development of an area which normally include the environment and economic factors.

Those involved in building a GIS have to identify all the information factors as well as their problems before planning the database for the system, said Autodesk Inc's vice president of GIS market group, Joseph H. Astroth.

"The power of a GIS lies in its ability to visualise what potential impacts, such as any dramatic environmental impact, will have on the development of an area," he said.

It helps the planners to see the environmental effects so that they can make faster, intelligent decisions and predict the outcome and impacts, Astroth told Computimes in Petaling Jaya.

In Malaysia, he said the GIS can help predict the impact storms would have on the drainage system, and this can assist the planners in anticipating any changes that might take place.

Other environmental factors which are typically included in building a GIS are land use, geology, soil, slope, drainage, roadmap, and flood map.

The social and economic factors, Astroth explained, are normally gathered from the growth centre map, industrial area map, population density map, planning zone map, and social economic map.

Together with AutoCAD Map, an automated mapping software to create and maintain maps, the GIS helps put all information in one environment and making it accessible to the public, he added.

"The whole process of mining the data and making it available to the public takes about six weeks."

However, Astroth said building the application from scratch will cover the entire project lifecycle which begins from planning, designing, and building the GIS eventually.

In terms of cost, 80 percent of the total cost of a GIS project comes from building and maintaining the system and not so much from the software as believed by some parties, according to Astroth.

To give an estimation on the average cost of building the GIS for the city of Oakland in California was approximately US75,000 (RM225,000).

Asked for his suggestions to GIS planners for the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) project, Astroth said the parties involved should select an appropriate technology.

"The most important thing is to determine the problems that you're trying to solve and to get the information out to the decision makers and to the public in an easy-to-use format," he said.

He advised the management to perceive the GIS as a planning tool to plan the economic development of the MSC project.

"It helps planners to develop their plan more cost-effectively and predict both the positive and negative impact," he said.

Hence, the GIS should be considered a decision-support system and developed with this in mind.