A System for Land Development Approval Management using Geographic Information Systems - A Case Study of Thimbirigasyaya Ward, Colombo

Abstract

In a developing Country like Sri Lanka, it is very important to plan and manage its land development programmes to attract investments to develop land resources. In this context special emphasis should be given to urban areas.The prevailing systems of issuing preliminary land development clearance by the Urban Development Authority (UDA) which is based on a manual filing system consumes significant time and is unable to provide alternative solutions to prospective developers. Most of the countries use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for similar land management work.A study was carried out, selecting Thimbirigasyaya ward of Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) to develop a GIS based lajid data management system in order to carry out the management of the land clearances in an efficient manner.Land parcel information obtained from CMC and UDA were scanned, spatial data were georeferenced and a mosaic was constructed. Input data were subjected to accuracy checks and were verified. Accuracies of data duplication, length, extent etc., were found satisfactory and adequate for UDA land clearance work. The database also incorporates the UDA conditions stipulated for location, zone and regulations enabling the checking of applications. The developed land information system was designed to include all functional aspects in the previous systems and additional capability to provide alternative solutions. The system developed using GIS was verified for computational accuracy using manual calculations. Adequacy checks were done with respect to the approved regulations.

Potential of Urban Land Management using Geographic Information Systems- A Study of Thimbirigasyaya Ward Colombo

“…Accuracy of digital database was checked for errors during photocopying and scanning. The errors were checked in comparison with the present regulations and also comparisons were done with field measurements (Leelananda, Wijesekera and Peiris 2005 attribute table as an example of the format of GIS database. Checking of data accuracy was important because any substantial differences in the stored and actual data would not be acceptable to the authorities and also would not receive public confidence.…”

“…1,000,000.00 per perch (25 m2) and indicating an approximately 67% rate of increase during 2005-6 period (Kapruka 2008). Considering the requirements of the UDA (1999) and high value of lands, the errors when preparing the database were assessed and were found very low (Leelananda, Wijesekera and Peiris 2005).…”

“…It is therefore very important to develop a structured and an accurate land information GIS and demonstrate the potential uses so that decision makers of Sri Lanka could be better convinced to commence on the development of an appropriate system. A system for land development and approval management using GIS was completed (Leelananda, Wijesekera and Peiris 2005) and it was indicated that using the GIS with appropriate changes would reduce the time taken for the process of land clearance to five days from the presently estimated duration of 40 days. Geographic Information Systems are new to most of the people and they deal with maps which are usually not treated as information friendly material by many persons (Albert and Yeung 2005).…”