Geographical Information Systems as a Tool in Sustainable Urban Development

Sustainable development has been in focus since late 1980’s and the Brundtland report Our Common Future. But the lack of a detailed common definition of sustainability makes the work for a sustainable urban development difficult. This literature review examines how Geographical Information Systems (GIS), Remote Sensing (RS) and Decision Support Systems (DSS) can be used as tools to help achieve sustainable urban development with focus on the environmental aspect of sustainability. By reviewing former research within the subjects of GIS, RS, DSS and sustainable urban development, the wide potential of how to use GIS, RS and DSS in urban planning are presented. GIS and RS can be used to plan for water usage, actions to decrease air pollution and climate change adaption, and combined with a DSS, the software can help decision makers in the process of planning. Suggestion made are to implement the GIS and DSS early in the planning process, and to base action plan goals on what is realistic, in areas that are in greatest need of sustainability initiatives. There are vast amounts of research made within the subject of DSS and sustainable development, but there is a lack of consensus among the DSS developed, and many stays on the prototype level due to e.g. lack of data and hard to use software. Similar implications are experienced within the subject of GIS and sustainable development, but there are great potential of succeed, when the knowledge of GIS and DSS are spreading among planners and sustainability workers. One of the most important tasks of GIS users today is to inform and develop GIS to be more user friendly and easy to access data