Application of GIS to identify infrastructure needs for land suitability - A case study of Thoppigala area in the eastern province

Abstract

Eastern province of Sri Lanka had been liberated by the Sri Lankan Government forces and after a democratic process the public representatives for the region have been appointed. As at present, a major concern of the decision makers would be to identify land areas according to their suitability and then to ascertain resource mobilization requirements to improve the suitability ranking of identified land extents. Ranking land suitability depends on many factors.

In the present work, a study area covering seven Divisional Secretariat Divisions in the Eastern province was selected to identify land suitability for housing. The natural environment, visibility, closeness to water bodies, green wild territory, and proximity to sea coast were considered as parameters of common preferences.

The multilayer GIS model divided the parameters in to three as natural, positive human influence and negative human influence. The modelling effort and its results indicate the strength of GIS and associated methodology for a resource manager to utilize similar systems for rational decision making. The paper also discusses the issues and improvements that could be effected when carrying out GIS modelling to analyze and evaluate geographical data.