1. LSGI4321
Individual Assignment
Topic:
It has been argued that the
increasing urbanization is
unsustainable.Discuss how GIT
can help plan a green/low carbon
sustainable city?
SHEH WING YIN
09202869D

2. It is estimated that around half of the world’s population are now living in urban
settlements. (Cohen, 2005)With the increasing density of population in urban
areas,urbanizationbenefits the local communities both economically and
socially. The economy of scale,the desire to improve living condition and
thedevelopment of new information technologies are the examples of the
driving forces behind this process. Because of the advantages of the economy
of scale, the employment opportunities have attracted large amount of people
from rural area to seekbetter job opportunities in urban area for better living
standards. At the same time, the proximity of every household has encouraged
the development of social services and community infrastructures, which help
strengtheningsocial network. These twofactors have been the major driving
forces inshaping societies.However, the planning of economic and social
developments ismainly inshort term without paying attention to long term
impacts.
Urbanization may be beneficial to society, but itcan also bring adverse impacts
to the general public. Over the recent few years, the drawbacks of urbanization
have drawn public’s attentionbecause ofthe adverse impacts brought by
unsustainable urban development, such as air and noise pollution. The
amount of the emission of greenhouse gases has also caughtthe public’s
attention as it is found that the composition of the atmosphere has changed
gradually, which may lead to climate changes.Climate changes can pose
serious threats to human beings, for example, unexpected long drought, long
raining season and rise of sea level.The impacts brought by climate change
are long-term in global scale. (Ryan, Turton, 2007) The influences are more
severe in developing countries. Therefore, there is a need for governments to
take measures to tackle this issue in order to stop deteriorating the situation.
Thus, decision makers and planners have begun to concern about developing
of an urban area or a city in a sustainable manner. According to ESRI (2007),
sustainable development is “the balance of meeting humankind's present
needs while protecting the environment to ensure the fulfillment of future
generations' needs”. In other words, sustainable development aims at

3. achieving economic development, environmental protection, and social
welfare in a balanced way. Since the increases in human population and the
demandfor the natural resources have never slowed down, the need to make
the planning of the society development sustainably cannot be ignoredso that
there are sufficient natural resources for our next generations.
Green, low-carbon city is anew practical concept which is deemed as one of
the solutions to tackle climate changes. With this concept, the development
planning can bemade with consideringthe ecological cycle, which provides
green and low carbon solutions indifferent aspects such as energy and
transportation.There are a number of indicators describing the concept of
green, low-carbon city, including the level of pollutions, the proportion of green
space to urban areas, efficiency in using energy, the sustainability of energy
used, and recycling rates (Meadows, 1999) Building a green, low-carbon city
can further benefit the social development, especially environmental
aspects.Environmental benefits include reduced pollution, which helps
improve public health and quality of life. In addition,striking for ecological
balance can reduce the risks of natural hazards. For instance, more vegetation
covers can help reduce soil erosion, and hencethus reduces the risk of
flooding during rainy season.
As the relationship between humans and the environments involves spatial
factors, it is vital to utilize the spatial technology to conduct the development
planning.Geo-Information Technology (GIT) is useful in this extent as
technologies likeGIS is capable in analyzing the spatial data and realization of
terrain features by modeling and visualization.The ability of this technology in
integrating different types of spatial datahas also helpedthe planners in dealing
with the complexity involvedin the decision making processes related to
sustainable development.By using GIT, decision makers will be able not only to
see the current state of the resources that they managed but also see the
impacts of their decisions and the future state of those resources.

4. To concentrate on the green and low carbon development framework, different
policy areas should be considered. Renewable energy andland use design will
be discussed in the following paragraphs.
Renewable Energy – Wind Power
Energy is essential for human beings to generate electricity for different uses,
such as domestic use and industrial use. However, the main energy resources
used by humans, such as fossil fuels, are non-renewable and theirsupply
islimited.In other words, the demand for energy resources is increasing due to
rapid population growth and non-stop developments over the world while the
amount of energy resources available are decreasing rapidly. As a result, it is
necessary to developalternativesustainable energy sourcesto reduce the
dependency on the existing energy sources.
Renewable energy has become a suitable substitute for energy generation,
which includes energy uses natural resources like solar energy and wind
energy. Unlike non-renewable energy, renewable energy will not be completely
used up.Furthermore, they do not emit exhaust gas whichaccelerate global
warming. Therefore, the trend of developing and researching on renewable
energy is expected to continue.(Hardcastle, Waterman-Hoey&Kunkle, 2009)
In this essay, wind farm projectwill be usedas an example to discuss how GIT
can provide assistance in the project to generate electricity via wind energy.
To determine the most suitable area for the project, some criticalinformation
has to be collected, such as population statistics, the distribution of land use,
wind intensitydata andthe network of transmission line. After collecting those
critical data, different GIS tools can be used for further analysis and evaluation.
To start with, the critical data may include both spatial and non-spatial data.
Therefore, spatial analysis, instead of traditional analysis, should be done to
analyze the relationships between them. By knowing the relationships between
differentvariables, future trend may also be predicted statistically. For instance,

5. population statistics and land use distribution are calculated and collected to
predict the demand for regional energy use. If some regions do not have high
demand on energy, it may not be economically efficient to carry out the project
for those regions.Another example is to use spatial analysis to describe and
show the trend of the wind intensity for ensuringthe stable supply of wind for
the power generation system. (Martin, Purellku & Gehlhaar, 2010)In this way,
spatial analysis is a useful tool in identifying the regions with high demand for
energy.
Furthermore,buffering can be used to estimate whether some protected areas
will be affected.Theoretically, buffering can also be used to highlightarea with
certainproximity of the selected feature.For example, there are evidences
showing that the construction of wind turbines will impose influence on the air
pressure around a certain distance. (Mountain Communities for Responsible
Energy, 2010) Since birds can be easily affected by the air pressure, it is
thusimportant to locate the construction areas having the least impacts on the
birds. With the data of bird populationof different districts, buffers can be
created and the areas inside the buffer will not be selected after considering
environmental aspect.
Overlay function is another powerful tool, which can integrate different data
layersto create a new layer by combining the attributes of the datalayers. For
instance, Harron(2008) has created a map which can overlay the wind
intensity layer withlayers of landscape sensitivity, archaeological and amenity
designations. With this map, project planners can spot out thearea around
constraints like steep slope and historical sites.Thus,project development will
not be carried out around those constraints.
Since the energy generated by a wind turbine can vary with environment
factors, it is essential to testvoltage fluctuation and other aspects by creating
simulation. Voltage fluctuation can then be predicted with different different
scenarios in the simulation model. In this way, solutions can be obtained for

6. dealing with the situations.
Building Design
Urban heat island is one of the threats faced by humans nowadays. It is
resulted from slower cooling rate in urban areas than rural areas. High
temperature in urban areas can lead to an increase in the demand of energy
for cooling purpose.As a result, vicious circleoccurs.Since the urban heat
island is partly contributed by dense buildings in urban areas, especially
commercial districts, buildingsshould be designed carefully considering
environmental aspects.
To begin with, the high density buildings in these districts usually have narrow
building gaps, blocking the natural air flow and wind. Therefore, air ventilation
is an important factor for making urban districts “cooler”. Without air flow
bringing away the heat, the heat will be concentrated in the urban areas, which
will directly increase the temperature of the whole district.
Apart from ventilation,building height is another problem - high rise buildings
usually block the air flowof the low rise buildings in their
neighborhoods.Waterfront high rise building is a good example, which has
blocked the sea breeze from flowing inland.To tackle this problem, the area
plan should be designed with wider building gaps between the buildings and
their neighborhoods with to allow the passage of breeze. In this way,
simulation model can be used to test and predictthe air pathby
inputtingpotential locationsand heights of the buildings.Hence, better
locationswithsuggested heights for the new buildings can be determined with
the minimal impacts on the natural air flow.Better air ventilation can thenbring
away the heat in the crowded areamore effectivelyto lower the overall
temperature of the entire district. Thus,less energy will be required for cooling
purpose.
To sum up, not only can decision makers be able to know more about the

7. current state of the resources managed by them, but they can also understand
the impacts of their decisions and future state of those resources.
Limitations of using GIT tools and techniques for the planning of a green
and low carbon city
Beyond the usefulness of GIT technology in the sustainable planning
design,there are several challengesand obstacles that may be faced by the
planners.
Firstly, the cost of data acquisition can be very high. The raster data like high
resolution satellite image and aerial images are expensive products.They can
contribute around 80% - 90% of the project budget. (Masters,Hirsch & Wong,
1994).
After finish collecting the critical data for the project, the stageof data
processing is time consuming. It is due to the fact that differentdistricts have
different economic, social and environmentalelements.Hence, huge amount of
spatial and non-spatial data have to be collected, which needs a large
proportion of time to do the data processing throughout the project.
In addition, the products of 3D animations and visualization are
hardware-demanding in nature and have very large file size.If3D products are
not createdand displayed inthe computers with goodhardwarequality,this may
impose difficulties in creating 3D products. Theproject members may need to
spend a lot of time on the stage of creating 3D models, which decrease work
efficiency as a whole.
Conclusion
Sustainable development is an urgent issue to be addressed by our society.
The effectiveness of GIT to provide tools and techniques to support the spatial
analysis, decision-making and spatial display for the development project has
been examined. To plan for a green and low carbon sustainable city, different

8. policy areas should be focused. Renewable energy and building design are
used as the examples of how GIT assist in the planning of the development
project and it is shown that tools and techniques of GIT are useful to a large
extent.However, this technology has a number of limitations, which may
impose challenges to the planners. To overcome the obstacles of the existing
technology, more researches should be carried outto improve the efficiency of
tools and techniques so that better urban planning can be achieved in the
future.

9. Reference:
Cohen, B. (2005). Urbanization in developing countries: Current trends, future
projections, and key challenges for sustainability. Technology in Society,
28 (2006), 63-80.
Ryan, L. & Turton, H. (2007). Sustainable Automobile Transport.Cheltenham:
Edward Elgar Publishing Limited.
GIS for sustainable development (2007). Retrieved October 20, 2011 from
ESRI, Web site:
http://www.esri.com/library/bestpractices/sustainable-development.pdf
Meadows, D. (1999). Indicators and information systems for
sustainable development. In: Satterthwaite, D., ed. The Earthscan
reader in sustainable cities. Earthscan, London
Hardcastle, A., Waterman-Hoey, S. &Kunkle,R.(2009). Renewable Energy
Industry Trends and Workforce Development in Washington State ., .
Negative impacts on Wind Farms (2010). Retrieved November 4, 2011 from,
Mountain Communities for Responsible Energy Web site:
http://www.wvmcre.org/neg_imapcts/neg_impacts.htm
Harron, S. (2008). Planning for Wind Energy in Donegal. Retrieved November
4, 2011 from Donegal County Council, Web site:
http://www.donegalcoco.ie/NR/rdonlyres/21B39DE5-C26A-4885-B7AC-32206
A4F37D7/0/PlanningforWindEnergyinDonegal.pdf
Martin, F., Purellku, I. & Gehlhaar, T. (2010). Modelling of and Simulation with
Grid Code validated Wind Turbine Models.
A submission on HK’s Climate Change Strategy & Action Agenda (2010).
Retrieved October 20, 2011 from Civic Exchange, Web site:
http://www.civic-exchange.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/101217Climat
ePaper.pdf

10. Masters, E., Hirsch, B. & Wong, K. (1994). GPS/GIS and Space Time Data.
Retrieved November 5, 2011 from The University of New South Wales, School
of Geomatic Engineering Web site:
http://webone.novatel.ca/assets/Documents/Papers/File36.pdf