LINKING URBAN FORM AND TRANSPORT USING GEO-INFORMATION: CASE STUDY AHMEDABAD, INDIA

Abstract:

With the current pace of social and economic development of cities in rapidly developing countries such as India and the resulting growth of the urban population, sustainable urban transport has become a major concern. The growing concern for sustainable transport is more and more becoming the domain of land use – transport planners who study the linkages between characteristics of urban form and travel behaviour in terms of trip characteristics and mode choice, hence energy use and emissions. Geo-information is increasingly used in the fields of urban planning, transport and environmental planning to make decision making processes more transparent, simpler and accurate. Remotely sensed imagery for example provides a globally available information resource that, when compared to traditional methods of data collection, has the ability to provide spatial data of an entire urban area at a greater data acquisition frequency, reusable for different kind of projects and in a relatively cost efficient way. This contribution to BAQ discusses two applications of geo-information technology for the study of urban form and transport impacts in the city of Ahmedabad, India. The first example reports on an ongoing study in Ahmedabad where remote sensing technology is being used to derive indicators of urban form and transport from a satellite image as well as in the creation of a three-dimensional digital surface model of Ahmedabad. Here, geo-referenced household survey data is linked to locational characteristics such as urban form and infrastructure network characteristics to establish a direct link between urban form and travel behaviour. Based on this analysis recommendations on land use planning can be made. In a second example the modal shift towards the proposed BRT system in Ahmedabad and the impact of this shift on the transport ecological footprint in the city is analyzed and mapped using location dependent stated choice experiments, Both examples show how geo-information can be used to study the relation between urban form and trip making behaviour in the context of cities such as Ahmedabad in India.