No more guess with GIS: an integrated approach to park planning design and operations using GIS

A central electronic database is an effective tool in integrating the processes of park planning, design and management. It can also serve to facilitate data collection and analysis, communication between the project team, client and public education. Geographic information systems (GIS) are already in use at many municipalities for collecting and analyzing data such as road, transit and utility systems. A GIS is a particularly powerful and flexible tool that can be tapped by a park and recreation department for additional purposes. Yet, GIS often is underused in the park planning and design process, both by municipalities and designers. In the right hands, it can be used to integrate a wealth of existing and new information, including photogrammetry, LiDAR and even CAD drawings. (See sidebar on page TK for more information on GIS.)

Integrated planning and design is the ideal approach for a park and recreation project, as it is for any project. This approach blurs the traditional boundaries among the planning and design disciplines, bringing together architects, planners, landscape architects, environmental scientists and mechanical/electrical/plumbing engineers from the outset of a project. Working as a team from an early stage of project planning, these professionals are able to discover and implement the most cost-effective solutions.

When considering the siting and orientation of a recreation building in a park, the team can address the various implications of vegetation, prevailing winds, daylight, solar gain and building design on the orientation, window design and selection, heating ventilation, air conditioning, and lighting system. The decisions they make together are likely to result in a more energy-efficient building, than if each is working almost independently on separate phases of design and engineering.

Cost-Effective Data

Can the planning and design team effectively do its work without using GIS? Certainly. However, the power and flexibility of the data available through GIS enhances the decisionmaking process by quickly, easily and cost-effectively enabling the team to access, view and analyze multiple layers of information. In the case of a recreation center in a county park, for instance, the architecture and engineering firm's GIS staff would collect and incorporate into GIS a base map from the municipality, site survey, topography, vegetation, streets, utilities, soil conservation, soil borings, flood plain, wetlands, zoning, community demographics, existing buildings and other structures on the site. In addition, aerial photography and elevation data, such as LiDAR, can also be incorporated.

GIS integrates this wealth of information into a single source and facilitates analysis. The team can use the analytical tools of GIS to examine various site constraints--flood plains, water, wetlands, significant trees and setbacks--and generate a composite layer that enables the team to identify an appropriate area in which to build the recreation center. The team can even produce two different composites, one for the building and one for the parking facilities, because the positioning criteria may differ. They also can use the data to aid in planning the visual characteristics of the site and access from roadways.

The team can also perform easy economic analyses of various components of the project. The municipality may envision a fee-generation element such as a new waterpark and recreation center. However, the new facility can be a white elephant for the community if there are not enough people to support it. Using demographic data in GIS, the planners can map the likely users of the facility, and it can be overlaid with the location of competing facilities. Through evaluation of the demographics and market share, the project's feasibility can be verified.

While a GIS has drawing capabilities, typically plans are drawn in a computer program called AutoCAD, because it is the best tool for this task. Nevertheless, when the design team members use GIS as an integral tool in the process, they will take care to enforce a good AutoCAD layering structure, for example, drawing all of their electrical circuits on a common layer, all of their walls on a common layer, etc. The GIS staff then can incorporate the AutoCAD drawings into the GIS to enable stakeholders and decisionmakers--the park and recreation department, planning board, other municipal officials and the public--to easily visualize the plans in the context of the surroundings. The plans can be presented electronically on a laptop, PC or Web site, and viewed anywhere--in homes, offices and public meetings.

In this way, GIS offers an additional communication tool beyond the standard presentation format of board-mounted drawings at one-eighth or one-quarter scale, which are still valuable tools in small architect-client meetings. However, the electronic format becomes invaluable in a board meeting or a large public meeting, where an infinite number of overlays can be added to and removed from the plans with ease.

Moreover, master plans at a 30th, 40th or 100th scale are almost impossible to present to a large gathering unless they are presented electronically, because of the difficulty of producing a hard copy of adequate size.

Long-Term EFfectiveness

Once the project has been constructed, GIS becomes the tool for the park and recreation department to manage long-term facility operations and maintenance, as well as plan for the future. With this in mind, the information created for the park and recreation department must be developed in the right format for the GIS package that the department is using. Moreover, the park and recreation department must make sure that the original engineered drawings of the project are revised to reflect all construction modifications noted by the contractor. As any modifications are made to the building through time, the department also should incorporate these into the as-built drawings so that a single picture of the facility is maintained.

Going forward, the park and recreation department can use the information in GIS for numerous purposes, from ongoing tree management and evaluating the impact of upstream development, to planning new facilities. By linking a computerized maintenance management system to the AutoCAD drawings in GIS, the system also can be used to track furnishings and equipment, and to generate and track work orders.

To be sure, using GIS involves a learning curve--it takes time to use the tools effectively. However, this is time well spent when one considers the advantages of GIS. In the right hands, GIS facilitates planning and design, enhances the public education and approval process, and helps a park and recreation department manage facilities more effectively and at lower cost over the long term. With vision, GIS can go far beyond automated mapping--it can become an information system that is part of the way a park and recreation department does business today and in the future.

WHAT is "GIS"?

Simply put, GIS is a technology that analyzes data from a geographic perspective. It combines layers of information about a place to give you a better understanding of that place. What layers of information you combine depends on your purpose--finding the best location for a new store, analyzing environmental damage, viewing similar crimes in a city to detect a pattern, and so on. Users of GIS can then take these varying layers of information, put them into one model, and make decisions based on this one source.

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