Geoinformatics role in urban planning process

Urbanization is a key to transform from traditional rural economies to modern industrial one which concentrates population in urban unit. At present, India is among the countries with low level of urbanization. During the last fifty years, Indian population has grown two and a half times whereas urban India has increased nearly five times. In 2001, 306.9 million Indians were living in nearly 3,700 towns and cities across the country, and is expected to increase to over 400 million by 2011 and 533 million by 2021. Most urban settlements are characterized by shortfalls in stock housing and water supply, urban encroachments in extreme 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 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 which allows collecting lot of physical data easily on repetitive basis with speed. Along with this, GIS helps to analyze the data spatially, generate various modeling thereby optimizing the whole planning process. These information systems makes the overall planning process effective and meaningful by offering interpretation of spatial data with other socio-economic data.