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Local Government, Technology

City Hall and GIS

By Amelia Kwok | 10 October 2008

Mapping technologies are changing the way city and local government operates.

Asia’s cities are booming – and Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) are growing in tandem with them. As neighbourhoods change overnight, and as pressure on limited municipal resources increases, the effective management of those resources requires a greater level of insight. Increasingly that greater clarity is being provided by GIS applications.

“Delhi faces severe problems with construction activities, electricity, traffic jams, parking of vehicles, water logging with rains and so on. The city houses over 14 million people within the area of 1500 square kilometres. This means that planning and management in the city has many challenging fronts. GIS makes data sharing among departments easy so that the government can work as an efficient, single enterprise,” explains Dr Vandana Sharma, Deputy Director General, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, National Informatics Centre in New Delhi in India.

Rapid urbanisation has placed pressure on local governments whose budgets have not grown as fast as their resident populations. In many parts of the region, economic migrants to cities are surplus and relatively poorly-educated labour from the countryside. Although the future growth of the city depends on these low cost workers – in the short term their arrival stretches municipal resources.

“Currently, nearly three-quarters of the population in developed countries live and work in cities. And although more than 60 per cent of people in the developing world still live in the countryside, rural people are moving into towns and cities in greater numbers than ever before,” says Dr Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka, Executive Director of UN-Habitat, the United Nations agency to promote socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities with the goal of providing adequate shelter for all.

“By the year 2030, the percentage of Asia’s population living in urban areas is expected to rise to 60 per cent,” says Tibaijuka.

“GIS is of critical importance to cities in providing the base data that then forms the base maps from which, ultimately, all city planning is executed,” says Richard Zambuni, Global Marketing Director for GIS at Bentley Systems, echoing Dr Sharma’s sentiments. “Without a sound and accurate base map, it is almost impossible for city officials to plan their growth in a managed way.”

The one region vying with Asia, in terms of the speed of its urbanisation, and the development challenges that brings with it is Africa.

“Although this may surprise some, Africa is the fastest urbanising continent in the world today. By the year 2030 half of its population will be living and working in towns and cities,” said Tibaijuka. Obviously, this will present problems to the local government.

The Premier of the KwaZulu-Natal province, Sibusiso Ndebele, identified GIS as an important tool for the city government in his ‘State of the Province’ address, to analyse in detail the condition of the province and its people with respect to addressing service delivery backlogs in the province relating to water, sanitation, waste removal and electricity. GIS was established in the province through the Department of Local Government and Traditional Affairs.

“Since then, the department has provided financial and GIS technical support to 10 district municipalities and about 30 local municipalities within the KwaZulu-Natal province,” says Mervin Naik, Manager at the GIS Department at the Department of Local Government and Traditional Affairs in Pietermaritzburg.

Fast-growing cities are not restricted to the developing world - the city of Mackay in Queensland Australia is one of the fastest-growing regions in Australia, owing to its booming mining and engineering sector. The rapid population growth, coupled with increased demand for development, has resulted in increased pressure on council staff to cater services for citizens efficiently, says Ray Geraghty, Acting CEO of Mackay Regional Council.

“Internet GIS has enabled the integration of council’s key information systems into one easy-to-use accessible web site. The solution enables council to manage and update the data and the internet mapping service,” he shares.

It is reckoned that 80 per cent of all public sector information contains a geospatial reference, such as an address or GPS coordinates – so presenting information in the form of maps, as opposed to traditional charts and tables enables a broader range of civil servants to manipulate complicated data with confidence.

“There has been quite a significant shift from professional users of GIS in government. We are seeing users change from being GIS professionals, to being professionals that use GIS,” says Chris Thomas, Global Lead for Government with GIS-solutions provider ESRI. “People do not need to understand how the technology works – the important thing is seeing how it all feeds back to and supports improvements to their familiar workflows and business processes.”

“One of the most powerful components of GIS is the concept of integration of data sets of different formats. It enforces a discipline to interact with different user group,” Dr Sharma says.

E-government goes local

“We pretty much see the same implementation patterns emerge,” Thomas continues. “GIS tends to find itself adopted in niches first – such as natural resource conservation and tax administration. Once officials see the value of GIS in these fields, you then see increased interest from the other municipal departments. It comes to be seen as the great decision support tool that it is.

Australia’s cities may not be as fast-growing as those of China and India, but they are good examples of how GIS use can be deployed across the breadth of local administration.

“The city of Melbourne must regularly communicate with and inform its various stakeholders of municipal works and issues, such as road closures, planning scheme amendments and alterations to services such as garbage collection. GIS enables a rapid response to these issues without the need to physically visit the site,” shared Catherine Ng, Chairman of the City of Melbourne Planning Committee.

“GIS imagery gives council officers the ability to quickly visualise a site or location and assess likely damage and necessary response.”

The council estimates that more than 80 per cent of the information stored on the system has a spatial reference or context within the GIS system, which underpins everything from asset management to emergency management and every ‘space’ including property, road and underground areas.

“Spatial analysis via the GIS system is an important tool used to analyse Customer Relationship Management statistics,” Ng adds. “Various council projects relating to areas such as city safety, noise, emergency management and sustainability have significant GIS components.”

According to ESRI’s Thomas, as administrators become more comfortable with GIS, they begin to explore additional uses for their existing investment. Citizen services are now a key focus, he says. “How do we make it simple and intuitive for citizens to access local government information?” Thomas asks rhetorically. “GIS has a role to play in creating interfaces that are valid for different types of users.”

Mackay Regional Council’s Geraghty notes that previously information had been inaccessible to residents: “Access to planning information such as property boundaries, its proximity to local schools and so on, was confined to a visit to council, which often resulted in a fee being charged,” he admits. However following implementation of a GIS solution provided by ESRI, the quality of service increased just as the cost to serve fell – residents were able to help themselves.

Examples of GIS-enabled services can be found not only in developed cities – one example of GIS being used to support citizen-facing services is that of Pietermaritzburg, the provincial capital of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.

“Citizen access to municipal information is sometimes impossible and there was an urgent need for an implementation of information management systems of some kind to address this issue,” adds Naiks of the Department of Local Government and Traditional Affairs in Pietermaritzburg.

“Most municipalities in South Africa are using GIS to address issues relating to development planning, disaster management, local economic development, tourism, housing and infrastructure. In a nutshell, GIS has enabled municipalities to effectively quantify basic needs and prioritise service delivery,” Naik explains.

The development of GIS has had an enormous impact upon how local governments do business. Practically everything can be mapped, and problems can be solved. For example, which streets to plot first, where to send a tax bill, how much of a county’s land is undeveloped - these are all the essential information that local governments need to know, and using GIS allows local governments to perform the tasks more efficiently, says Dr Sharma.

“The implementation of true GIS may replicate logical functioning of any society,” she adds. “GIS has proven to be a revolutionary concept in the field of planning and monitoring, and in many instances, to connect better with citizens.”

The provision of quality customer service to the local community has always been a key priority at the city of Whitehorse in Australia, located 10 miles (16 kilometres) from Melbourne. According to Jeanette Paoletti, GIS Coordinator for the city, there have been an increasing number of enquiries to the council’s customer service centres relating to council amenities and services. “By having this information displayed in a map format, users are able to orient themselves from known locations in the area, such as their house or workplace, and use this location awareness to pinpoint the information they need,” said Paoletti.

Digital cities

“Perhaps the most exciting trend right now, is the advent of 3D cities – this is both a boon to planners who can better visualise potential changes to the cityscape, and to citizens who can view plans realistically. This means you don’t have to look at 2D plans to try to imagine how new buildings and cityscapes will look. 3D cities have the potential to evolve into true ‘virtual cities.’ 3D cities will help and government and citizens to connect personally and productively with the fabric and future of their cities,” said Bentley Systems’ Zambuni.

The city of Melbourne is also embarking on 3D projects. “We are currently building a 3D immersive model of the city for visualisation, simulation and thematic mapping purposes. We are also implementing the use of GIS on the internet. The project will occur in stages and will ultimately provide external partner organisations and stakeholders with ready access to spatial information. The aim of transitioning GIS online is to encourage users’ interaction with the city of Melbourne in new and exciting ways,” said Ng.

The internet has transformed information access in the first world – and also in the cities of the developing world. Once government users get used to the convenience of accessing GIS data from their desktop, integrating multiple data sources, there is no going back. That applies to citizens as well.

“I can see information which otherwise would only have been available at City Hall, and I’d have had to schedule an appointment,” Thomas sums up. “This represents great ROI for city officials. Not only do they get to streamline the efficiency of their organisation, but citizens are now able to access GIS information online. So we are starting to add value simply by drawing information off a web site, and in so doing we are starting to break down barriers: that government isn’t hiding anything from the citizen.”

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