Introduction
For
healthy and happy living adequate provision of community facilities & public utility services are essential as they provide scope for increase in efficiency and economic utilization of time. In recent years, the urban communities have not been able to obtain all the essential community facilities largely due to the wide gap between the resource availability and optimum resource needed to provide such facilities. Another important factor responsible for the continuation of this wide gap is the perennial influx of rural population to urban centers. This further creates extra burden on the available services & utilities. As per the 1981 and 1991 census the class I town of India increased from 218 to 298, and the total population of these towns increased from 95 million to 139 million. Out of total population of 139 million, about 71 million populations are concentrated in metropolitan cities. One of the major reasons leading to migration to these big cities is the lack of services in the small and medium towns. To restrict this government had already undertaken the IDSMT (Integrated Development of Small and Medium Towns) project. Thus in recent years, community facilities & public utility services have been considered as the most essential element in urban life. As the utility & amenity policies & practices have an important bearing upon the rate and direction of urban growth and the pattern of urban development, these facilities & services should be rationally controlled and provided in accordance with the needs of the community.
In order to prepare a development plan for small and medium towns basic information regarding location of existing facilities, their accessibility and development trends, in relation to socio-economic structure of the town is needed. The process of planning for human settlement involves the use of both spatial and non-spatial data. Planners need updated accurate maps and other analytical information to prepare useful development plan. But acquiring data in the conventional way is very time consuming and costly, remote sensing on the other hand provides the means to acquire basic data on urban areas more quickly with less cost on a repetitive basis.
Objectives
The broad aim of the present study is to make an application of remote sensing for generation of spatial data and further, to use GPS technology in the inventory of facilities and services in spatial domain. And to apply GIS to analyze data to prepare planning inputs for the formation of development plan of DehraDun City. The objectives can be listed as follows:
- To prepare location map of selected urban facilities and services using GPS technology.
- To identify the service areas of different facilities and services which will be the inputs for preparation of comprehensive development plan of the city.
- To make an intra urban disparity analysis of selected facilities and services.
- To identify areas for future expansion
and location of selected urban facilities.
Selection of Facilities for Analysis
For a sound study it would have been better to select all kinds of facilities and services required for urban areas but due to time constrain it was not feasible. Hence in the present study only following facilities have been considered. These are Bank, Post Office, Primary School (govt. aided), Secondary School (govt. aided), Health Post, Hospital, Fire Station, Road Transport, Water Supply and Sewerage.
Spatial Analysis
The existing gap between demand and available resource in developing countries makes the attempts to solving the problem of unbalanced distribution of infrastructure services more difficult. This problem necessitates the issue of assessing the exact level of infrastructure services in different areas, to be able to rank them accordingly. This study could be used for the DehraDun Corporation area in providing a methodology, with which to monitor infrastructure provision. The methodology could answer the following specific questions:
- In which areas the infrastructure lacking is higher and has to be given priority for action?
- Which aspects should be given priority for improvement?
- Which sectors are performing properly?
For analysis, population density map and buffer zone maps of facilities are used to find out the number of people being served by the existing utilities & services in DehraDun Corporation area. ARC/INFO and ARCVIEW software have been used for spatial analysis. Buffer zones considered for each type of facility is presented below.
| Facility |
Buffer Zone
(In meter) |
Mode of Travel |
| Bank |
1000
1500 |
Walking
,, |
| Post office |
500
1000 |
,,
,, |
Primary School
(govt. aided) |
500
1000 |
,,
,, |
Secondary School
(govt. aided) |
1000
2000 |
,,
Vehicle |
| Health Post |
500
1000 |
Walking, |
| Hospital |
1000
2000
3000 |
Walking
Vehicle
,, |
Bus Stand
(long distance) |
3000
5000 |
,,
,, |
| Local Bus Route |
500
1000 |
Walking
,, |
| Vikram Route |
250
500 |
,,
,, |
| Other Roads |
100 |
,, |
| Fire Station |
5000
10000 |
Vehicle
,, |