GIS Application in Land Use Mapping and Implementation and Control of Land Use Planning

PART III: EVALUATION

8 Evaluation and Recommendations

It was shown, that the setup of a GIS project is a complex task, which requires consideration of various fields - and expertise accordingly: To repeat, the three preconditions of the GIS concept (user friendliness, standardization, performance), the four frame components (objective orientation, application development, marketing, management), and the three execution levels (concept, methodology, techniques).

With many crucial aspects been shown, attention shall be drawn again on:

Human resource assessment: This is most important to start with,
Techniques: This is the most time consuming,
Management: This might take the longest time, and is maybe the most important for the diffusion.

During project execution, many unforeseeable problems can occur. Following recommendations shall try to minimize the impact of these problems:

Balanced input to individual activities and tasks, monitored by the supervisor/ team leader
Maintaining balance between academic and fast-and-dirty approach, for an applicable methodology
Stressing the importance of standardization, and the maintenance/update of standardization; staff has to follow standardization rules

Sufficient memory and harddisk capacity for the computers, software to be selected under the point of view of compatibility and avoidance of memory conflicts
Avoid data incompatibility at updates of software or operating system by selecting right software and OS (expected life span of software and data formats)
After installation and professional configuration of hardware and software, staff not be allowed to change configuration.
Power supply has to be adequate, UPS have to be installed for all devices.
Permanent viruses scanning
Budget flexible enough for new technologies, software and hardware procurements in due course of the project; contingency amount sufficient

Sufficient diversification of training (core training for application developer vs. application training for users)
Assignment of staff responsible for hardware and data
Assignment of highly skilled staff

Attempt to speed up management adaptation and/or re-structuring, as this follows only slowly and long after technical innovation; fasten actual GIS diffusion in the agency.

In the long term, emphasis on the future development and implementation of GIS projects has to handle:

both techniques and data,

as well as the policies and strategies constructed, using them as a monitoring and management tool.

'People are easily fascinated by hardware and software for image processing and by the pretty pictures produced. Technologists prepared the maps and databases, while decision-makers, politicians, government planners, and private corporations ignored them. Apart from cartography, little in the way of concrete outcome could be credited to the technologists.' (A.M.North, Remote Sensing and GIS in Asia, GIS Asia Pacific, p.22, August 1996)

In any GIS setup, it is important to address the decision makers: the politicians, the planners, the investors, the ‘entrepreneurs’, the land users, to be aware of the facilities of the system and to make use of the data - and to give constructive feedback to the managers, designers and developers of the information system.

In very near future, it should be up to the ‘decision makers’ to use all these tools!

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