GIS and policy management for regional planning; A case study in Sardinia, Italy

Regional planning is usually characterized by a high level of complexity and uncertainty. The overlay of a number of instruments that affect land use, such as master plans, urban planning laws and regulations, leads to many difficulties linked to the interpretation of their meaning and the particular distribution of their impacts. In this scenario, it is necessary to find an instrument able to speed up the phase of the analysis for planning, by means of an automatic link between alphanumeric information and a set of geographic objects. The Italian Center of National Research funded in 1998 a project concerning the regional planning state of the art, with the main goal of understanding the basic outline and the underlying development strategies for Italy. The research project, named QUATER, comprises a series of local research Units. The aim of the paper is the presentation of an activity report issued by the Unit of the Region of Sardinia, at the Department of Territorial Engineering, Cagliari, Italy. Particular attention will be given to the construction of a GIS able to manage spatial information and an alphanumeric data set in order to provide shared, public and transparent information for policy and planning management