The excitement, interest and response of the delegates in the Urban and Regional Planning session are quite palpable. Inventing and unveiling of 3D models and digital cities right in the conference hall grabbed the attention of the audience tremendously.
The first presentation was by Diannald Beh of Bentley Systems on 3D City GIS for Sustaining City Infrastructure. He said the world is taking keen interest in finding ways to build sustainable infrastructure. 3D modelling and visualisation is one of them. People have started using 3D modelling for planning, to promote tourism and for a host of other applications.
Diannald detailed the issues involved in creation and updation of 3D models and detailed which technique to use for which level of detail (LOD). After creating the model, he said, we need a way to persist, serve and manage the infrastructure that is created.
Another interesting presentation on digital cities came from Dan Campbell, GIS planning manager, City of Vancouver, Canada. He narrated the experiences of Vancouver in working to be digital. He detailed the reasons for opting for a 3D model, outlined the changing production process, lessons learnt and the gaps and future directions.
Discussing the trends in the 3D space, Dan said the boundaries between 3D analysis, visualisation and geospatial analysis are blurring. 3D use is expanding beyond planning and development and in future one can expect to get 3D content off the shelf.
Moving from digital cities, the second part of the technical session gave same insights into regional planning to tackle local problems. Dr Lalan Kumar, Scientist, Central institute of Mining and Fuel Research, India talked on GIS and RS for identification of rehabilitation and resettlement area - Jharia coalfields. Mine fires, bush fires, subsidence of surrounding areas are common in and around coal fields. Unscientific means of coal mining aggravates the situation affecting the surrounding settlement areas. Lalan Kumar presented how geospatial technologies have been used in Jharia, India, to identify these problems and prepare a master plan for rehabilitation.
Mohsen Ahadnejad Reveshty, academic member in Zanjan University, presented a methodology for constructing earthquake risk scenarios for the Zanjan city, Iran. Another example of GIS application for regional planning came from Kativich Kantha from Thailand. He detailed the use of GIS in site selection for setting up ethanol plants in Nakhonratchasima province, Thailand. The last presentation of the session came from Zulkiflee Bin Mohd Zaki, Deputy Director, Urban Development Authority, Singapore. He talked about how GIS is being used in the urban planning sector of Singapore through the integrated Planning and Landuse System (iPLAN). The session then moved into an interesting round of questions and answers.
