THE INTEGRATION OF GIS AND REMOTE SENSING IN REGIONAL ECONOMIC PLANNING∗

An integrated GIS has been developed as the core of an Asian Development Bank funded project which will provide the foundation for the regional economic planning in semi-arid areas in North China. The GIS is composed of a regional geographical data base and a collection of spatial models. The regional geographical data base contains data sets from terrestrial-based sources including thematic maps and statistical records, and remote sensed data. A series of spatial models have been developed by experts in various disciplines such as soil erosion, economics, rural development and arid land management. These models are then implemented into the GIS environment and an extensive mapping tasks are conducted. As the result, a regional development plan is produced to balance the demand from different interest group of land use to achieve an optimum, environmentally sound economic development