CHAPTER 31 DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR URBAN PLANNING

Ngai Weng Chan, Narimah Samat and Nguyen Minh Hoa

Introduction

According to he planning of urban infrastructures has important spatial implicationsthat needs decision
support system. Decision support systems (DSS) enable evaluation of alternative courses of action that
requires the explicit consideration of multiple criteria as they have important social, economic, and
environmental effects. A good decision support system offers the users (e.g. the Mayor, city government
or municipal agencies) a flexible and user-friendly environment to provide decision aid in urban
infrastructure planning. For example, using Geographic Information System (GIS) not only gives
visualization of available alternatives on maps but also enables analysis to be made based on many
layers of interaction in the GIS software. For example, an overlay of land use and flood-prone areas
provides the user with better choices to make when choosing land for housing or other developments,
as flood-prone areas can be avoided. GIS-enabled intervention certainly provides a value-added for
decision support processes in urban infrastructure evaluation process.

According to Ahris Yaakup et. al. (2009) in

desired goals and objectives, evaluate alternatives as well as control development programs that are in
line with current and future prospects. In the quest toward urban sustainability planning, a support tool
in the form of an information system is required for enhancing analyses and deriving rational decisions.
Planning support system (PSS) and DSS are among the tools for achieving quality planning for optimum
development. Both tools support the tasks of plan formulation, monitoring and review which inevitably
involve the assembly and integration of geographic information via GIS are known to be widely used in
considering alternative spatial development strategies as well as assessing development potentials
involved in land use planning. Ahris Yaakup et. al. (2009) show that various uses of DSS with a focus on
its functionalities can support development planning and management at various levels of development
planning and implementation.

Urban Planning

Urban planning is a technical and political process concerned with the use of land, protection and use of
the environment, public welfare, and the design of the urban environment, including air, water, and the
infrastructure passing into and out of urban areas such as transportation, communications, and
distribution networks.Urban Planning is also referred to as urban and regional, regional, town, city, rural
planning or some combination in various areas worldwide. Urban planning guides and ensures the
orderly development of cities, their settlements and infrastructures with a view of their satellite
communities which commute into and out of urban areas or share resources with it. It concerns itself
with research and analysis, strategic thinking, architecture, urban design, public participation and
consultation, policy recommendations, implementation and management (Taylor, 2007). Urban
Planners work with colleagues in a diverse area encompassing experts from the fields of Architecture,
Landscape Architecture,Civil Engineering and Public Administration to achieve strategic, policy and
sustainability goals. Early urban planners were often members of these cognate fields. Today urban
planning is a separate, independent professional discipline. The discipline is the broader category that
includes many different sub-fields such as land-use planning,zoning, urban environmental management,
environmental planning and transportation planning.

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Urban Planning is a wide field that includes planned cities (A planned community, or planned city, is any
community that was carefully planned from its inception and is typically constructed in a previously
undeveloped area. For example, in the ancient world, Machu Picchu (Photograph 31.1) is considered a
very well planned city. This ancient Incan city is mindbogglingly complex and planned . The city is built
on top of a mountain, through a process of terraces leading up the mountainside to the top, is both
beautifully stunning as well as functional astorrential rains were dealt with by a multilayer of different
materials in the terraces combined with complex aqueducts and ridges throughout the city. The planned
aqueduct system also supplies water everywhere in the city, with a process that calculated how to keep
a constant precise rate of flow even in the rain(https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-wellplanned-
city-in-the-world Accessed 11 Aug 2016).This contrasts with settlements that evolve in a more ad hoc or
unplanned-haphazard manner). Urban planning also includes Redevelopment, which refers to state and
federal statutes which give cities and counties the authority to establish redevelopment agencies and
give the agencies the authority to attack problems of urban decay. The fundamental tools of a
redevelopment agency include the authority to acquire real property, the power of eminent domain, to
develop and sell property without bidding and the authority and responsibility of relocating persons
who have interests in the property acquired by the agency. It also includes Urban Design, which is the
process of designing and shaping cities, towns and villages. In contrast to architecture, which is of
smaller scale as it focuses on the design of individual buildings, urban design deals with the larger scale
of designing groups of buildings, transportation hubs and streets/railways, greenlungs and public spaces,
housing estates and neighbourhoods and districts, and even entire cities. The ultimate goal of urban
planning is to create urban areas that are all at once functional, attractive and sustainable (Inam, 2013).
Urban planning also includes Transit Oriented Development (TOD) (see Chapter 27) which focuses on
transportation planning, among other things.

Photograph 31.1: Machu Picchu, an ancient Incan city that is mindbogglingly complex and planned. The
building of the city atop a mountain, through a process of terraces leading up the mountainside to the
top, was stunning. The large amounts of rain were dealt with by creating a multilayer of different
materials in the terraces combined with complex aqueducts and ridges throughout the city. The
development of the aqueduct system to also supply water everywhere in the city, with a process that
calculated how to keep a constant precise rate of flow even in the rain, is also pretty awesome in how it
works.

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Urban planning is multi-disciplinary field that although branching out of architecture, includes many
disciplines such as engineering, social science, geography, urban environmental management (UEM),
planning, amongst others. Urban planning seeks to organize city/metropolitan areas into livable areas
via careful planning, sustainable development as well as mitigate problems caused by spontaneous
expansion of cities encroaching into rural areas. Urban or city planning aims to provide a safe, organized,
and enjoyable home and work life for residents of both new and established towns. Today, some of the
largest concerns of urban planning are building locations, zoning, transportation, and how a town or city
looks. Planners also try to eliminate run down areas and prevent their development, as well preserve
the natural environment of the area. One f the concepts of Urban planning is Building Locations and
Zoning. The location of buildings, coupled with designating certain areas of a city for specific purposes
(i.e., residential zones, commercial areas, and industrial sections), is extremely important in urban
planning. For example, the majority of parents do not want their children's playground right next to a
water treatment plant, and having a hospital in a central location can literally save lives. In order for law
enforcement personnel to be effective, they need to be able to get anywhere in the city within minutes.
This means stations need to be both centrally located and scattered throughout the area, and that roads
should be designed to make getting anywhere fast as easy as possible.

Sustainable urban planning takes all of these and many more factors into consideration when choosing
the locations for buildings, and sets up appropriate zones accordingly. Transportation is another aspect
that needs proper planning in cities. Not withstanding the use of TOD, Ensuring there are enough roads
and highways, as well as easy-to-access public transportation, is also a priority in this field. Anticipating
growth and traffic needs for a big city is important, and urban planners often consider how future
growth will affect traffic flow. With this information, they often try to eliminate potential trouble spots
before they become a problem. With new cities or expansions, planning for public transportation,
whether under or above ground, is also important, especially as major metropolitan areas move more
towards more environmentally friendly practices. Urban planning must also ensure the Appearance and
Environmental Aspects of cities. Urban planning is a branch of architecture and, as such, form and
function are just as important in a city as they are when designing a new building. Outside of ensuring
the health and safety of residents, urban planning also takes into account what the city looks like, from
specific building designs to incorporating landscaping and green spaces into the area. City planners often
need to consider how to make city expansion sustainable as well as practical and functional. Planners
need to consider air quality and noise pollution to minimize noise and air pollution and to plan smaller
housing developments to limit the impacts on the environment. Newly planned cities often take the
incorporation of green spaces and the use of environmentally friendly power sources and transportation
seriously. Urban planning would have failed if cities are littered with slums and squatter settlements.
Hence, Eradication of Slums/Squatter Settlements is an important aspect of good urban planning. Much
of urban planning is based on a combined knowledge of architecture, economics, human relations, and
engineering. For this reason, there are numerous theories on the development of slums and the
occurrence of urban decay. Slums, defined as overcrowded, run down sections of a city occupied by
people in the lowest socioeconomic bracket, are often at the forefront of the field. Urban planners and
other city officials often work to eliminate or improve existing slums and to ensure that new ones do not
develop. This is a challenge, however, as many different social, political, and economic factors are
involved not only in the development of such areas, but in their continued existence. In 2012, the United
Nations estimates that over one billion people live in these types of conditions.
Decision Support System

Narimah Samat (2016) in Chapter 30 has described in detail that a decision support system (DSS) is a
computer program application that analyzes data and presents it so that users can make planning
decisions more easily. It is an informational application that gathered data to assist in decision making.
With the

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advance of Geographic Information System, computer based software that can be used in acquiring,
managing, manipulating and analyzing, and displaying spatial and non-spatial information, DSS makes
used of GIS has led to the development of planning decision support systems (PSS) that assist planning
making process. A Decision Support System (DSS) is defined as a computer-based information system
that supports any kind of decision-making activities, be it in a city, business organization or factory. A
good DSS will help the organization saves costs, time and resources. DSSs serve the management,
operations, and planning levels of an organization. DSS help people make more accurate decisions about
problems that may be surface due to rapidly changing environments, viz. the unstructured and
semistructured decision problems. Decision support systems can be either fully computerized, human-
powered or a combination of both. While academics have perceived DSS as a tool to support the
decision-making process, DSS users see DSS as a tool to facilitate organizational processes. Some
authors have extended the definition of DSS to include any system that might supportdecision-making.
Sprague (1980) defines DSS by its characteristics: (i) DSS tends to be aimed at the less well structured,
underspecified problem that upper level managers typically face; (ii) DSS attempts to combine the use of
models or analytic techniques with traditional data access and retrieval functions;(iii) DSS specifically
focuses on features which make them easy to use by noncomputer people in an interactive mode; and
(iv) DSS emphasizes flexibility and adaptability to accommodate changes in the environment and the
decision making approach of the user.

DSSs include knowledge-based systems (KBS), i.e. a computer programme that reasons and uses a
knowledge base to solve complex problems. The term is broad and is used to refer to many different
kinds of systems. The one common theme that unites all knowledge based systems is an attempt to
represent knowledge explicitly via tools such as ontologies and rules rather than implicitly via code the
way a conventional computer program does. A properly designed DSS is an interactive software-based
system intended to help decision makers compile useful information from a combination of raw data,
documents, and personal knowledge, or business models to identify and solve problems and make
decisions. Typical information that a decision support application might gather and present includes: (i)
inventories of information assets (including legacy and relational data sources, cubes, data warehouses,
and data marts); (ii) comparative sales figures between one period and the next; and (iii) projected
revenue figures based on product sales assumptions. DSSs are often contrasted with more automated
decision-making systems known as Decision Management Systems (Taylor, 2012).

Conclusion
Urban planning is a very complex process that involves multi-disciplinary approach requiring expertise
from many related fields. DSSs from different fields can enhance urban planning by finding solutions
quicker and decision-making more objective and accurate. Currently, more and more applications have
emerged that integrate knowledge-based DSSs and urban planning. Even artificial neural networks are
starting to appear in urban planning, and interest in such integrated DSSs is growing rapidly. Current
research is focused on an integrated system in which a knowledge-based DSS is integrated with a
multilayer artificial neural network for urban planning. By integrating DSSs, KBSs and artificial neural
networks, the urban planning process achieves improvements in implementation and increases the
scope of such applications. This approach is very rewarding in its synergism of three technologies to
solve complex urban problems. Integrated DSS design and urban development process benefits from a
close interaction not only between scientists of different disciplines but also between the urban
planners, scientists and IT-specialists.