Urban and Regional Planning and Geo-information Management

To develop and apply concepts and methodologies incorporating geographic information and communication technologies to improve the capacity of organisations involved in urban and regional planning to develop appropriate and effective spatial policies, plans and management practices to address development issues. 

Contemporary spatial planning practice is problem-driven and action-oriented and guided by concerns related to the environment, social equity, economic development and disaster mitigation and management within multi-stakeholder settings. These concerns therefore frame the development and application of GIT based methodologies that are appropriate to the specific geographic setting. Our expertise is applied at various scales, ranging from community planning to the planning and management of extended urban regions where the interactions and linkages between urban and rural areas are key issues.

To develop and apply concepts and methodologies incorporating geographic information, remote sensing and communication technologies to model, describe and understand urban infrastructure systems to support the capacity of organisations in developing effective responses to the changing demands for good quality urban infrastructural services from all groups within society.

The Urban Infrastructure knowledge field refers to the provision, operation and maintenance of physical infrastructure, social services and transport. The knowledge field is based on a number of recognised academic and practical focus areas within civil engineering and geography that are relevant in both the developed and the developing world. Contemporary notions of infrastructure development form the context in which the knowledge field operates: infrastructure needs to be planned and developed with multi-stakeholder involvement guided by policies of social equity, access to all, cost recovery, affordability and appropriate technology. These concerns are present in the research theme Planning support for infrastructure development that will guide the short and medium term research activities.

To contribute to education, research and advisory services activities of ITC where it concerns the field of land administration, which is defined as the ‘process of determining, recording and disseminating information about tenure, value and use of land, when implementing land management’ (UN, 1996). 

As land administration is not an end in itself, but serves society, the knowledge field develops understanding of the way land administration systems should support:

• the development of a land policy in a multi level government environment
• the implementation of such land policy trough measures regarding land tenure, land markets, land taxation, land use planning, land reform and the management of natural resources
• the principles of good governance and the rule of law as a context
• adequate institutional conditions of legal framework and mandates in the public administration which the land administration system needs in order to serve these functions
• organisational conditions of business goals and IT policy at strategic level, and work processes and supportive IT architecture at operational level to make land administration systems work, and development of geo-information systems for land administration.

To develop concepts and methodologies for structuring (architectural and socio-technical issues), monitoring (performance, quality and implementation measurement issues) and financing geo-information assets, in the context of multi-level governance of urban regions. 

The knowledge field draws upon concepts and methodologies from the reference fields of information science, management science and social studies of technology.

Key fields of interest are:

• Related to structure
  Architectures for the design and management of multi-dimensional SDI in the government hierarchy (central, regional, local levels) for the delivery of complex services, aggregated from different stakeholders
• Related to monitoring
  Architectures to manage performance and quality of geo-services
  Capacity Development Indicator Frameworks (CDIF) for monitoring Information Infrastructure development 
  Monitoring the dynamics of SDI implementation with socio-technical approaches
• Related to financing
  Costing and funding models for geospatial data updating and provision
  The national budget as an instrument for inter-agency SDI coordination

To develop concepts and methods to support planning and decision making for resource allocation in complex environments characterised by multi-system and multi-stakeholders. It supports problem structuring, preparatory planning and decision-making prior to the actual employment of resources. From this angle the knowledge field is engaged in the development of concepts, methods, models and techniques that enhance the use and application of geo-information. 

Planning and Decision Making Methods is anchored in Operations Research Science and Planning Theory, with a particular emphasis on the spatial characteristics of collaborative and participatory modelling to support development and assessment of resource allocation scenarios to support resource allocation decisions. Planning and Decision Making Methods thus concerns with two related yet separated fields of theory and practice, as follows:

• Spatial Planning Support Systems (SPSS), focusing on modelling demand and supply of resources, suitability assessment, generation and evaluation of plans and policy scenarios through qualitative, quantitative, dynamic and static spatial simulation models.
• Spatial Decision Support Systems (SDSS), focusing on spatial multi-criteria decision analysis, group decision making, adaptive collaborative management approaches, trade-off analysis, development of intelligence and interactive SDSS through knowledge based DSS, visual interactive modelling and visualisation of results, and impacts.