Experiences of Applying GIS for Regional Development Planning

Usefulness and applicability of GIS for regional development planning studies of GIS are discussed with specific reference to two project case studies in developing countries involving large spatial databases. GIS was applied in a water resources master plan study of Kenya for determining land suitability for crops, and for determining areas of groundwater availability. In another regional planning study in Northeast Thailand, GIS was used for land use planning and for environmental planning. It was determined that the powerful inherent capacity of GIS as a Information Management Tool resulted in considerable savings of man-months. Display and manipulation of large spatial databases is also greatly facilitated by a GIS based approach which by conventional methods would have been difficult and very time consuming. The use of GIS for analysis also resulted in the evolution of a valuable digital natural resource database of immense value for planners in the concerned developing countries for future use and updating. For the development of a GIS, parameters such as the scale of base maps and detail of information input into the database were determined to be more important than the choice of computer hardware and software. Interaction among domain experts and the GIS expert as well as educating domain experts about GIS is very important for successful GIS implementation. Training and technology transfer issues need to be considered at an early stage when use of GIS itself is being considered.