ROLE OF GEOINFORMATICS IN URBAN PLANNING

Urbanization is an index of transformation from traditional rural economies to modern industrial one. It is a progressive concentration of population in urban unit. During the last fifty years the population of India has grown two and a half times, but urban India has increased nearly five times. In 2001, 306.9 million Indians (30.5%) were living in nearly 3,700 towns and cities spread across the country, and it is expected to increase to over 400 million and 533 million by 2011 and 2021 respectively. At the moment, India is among the countries of low level of urbanization. As a result, most urban settlements are characterized by shortfalls in stock housing and water supply, urban encroachments in fringe area, inadequate sewerage, traffic congestion, pollution, poverty and social unrest making urban governance a difficult task to maintain healthy urban environment. High rate of urban population growth is a cause of concern among India’s urban and town planners for efficient urban planning. Therefore, there is an urgent need to adopt modern technology of remote sensing which includes both aerial as well as satellite based systems, allowing us to collect lot of physical data rather easily, with speed and on repetitive basis, and together with GIS helps us to analyze the data spatially, offering possibilities of generating various options (modeling), thereby optimizing the whole planning process. These information systems also offer interpretation of physical (spatial) data with other socio-economic data, and thereby provide an important linkage in the overall planning process and making it more effective and meaningful.