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The goal of the PDP is to establish a comprehensive planning framework for the country's long-range physical development up to the year 2020, improving the government's ability to: track development trends and project future development needs; explore the opportunities and impacts of alternative development scenarios; establish responsible and consistent development policies and regulations based on social values, community aspirations, and fiscal realities; control, monitor, and assess new development proposals and construction in keeping with government policies and priorities; carefully manage government expenses related to infrastructure and service provision in support of new development; ensure ease of implementation and effectiveness of the PDP between the many governmental entities that play a role in the development process; and, perhaps most importantly, improve the quality of Qatar's built environment for the benefit of all its residents. The PDP addresses the country's physical planning needs at four geographic levels&emdash;national, master directive, local area, and detailed area, which provides an integrated planning hierarchy that addresses planning issues from the broadest level to the most detailed. This hierarchy allows for increasing levels of attention and detail in areas where planning issues are more complex and specialized policy or design solutions are warranted. However, all levels of the PDP hierarchy are integrated within a single, national land use planning system. This GIS-based system ensures a consistent planning approach throughout the country while allowing the flexibility necessary to meet localized planning needs. Most PDP policies are geographically specific and based on land use and/or local conditions (e.g. the policy is specific to industrial land use or applicable only to buildings of historic value). The mapping of PDP policies to specific geographic locations is done through a series of policy maps and overlays, all of which are linked to policy text and development regulations through the country's GIS. While the policy maps and regulatory overlays may be presented with a greater degree of detail and specificity in a local area plan as compared to the national and regional plan, they are all part of the same PDP map system. In other words, the maps for Al Khor are simply a detailed subsection of the maps for the entire country. This ensures a consistent, integrated set of policy maps for all of Qatar's future development. Through the GIS, these maps can be quickly accessed in various combinations at all levels of geographic detail. A key component of the PDP's usability and effectiveness is its implementation within Qatar's GIS as implemented through The Centre for GIS (CGIS). As a GIS-based planning tool, the PDP has been formulated to maximize the electronic search, retrieval, and analysis features of the GIS. The usability of this data structure relies to a large degree on the ability of the GIS to link and interrelate spatial, non-spatial data, and text data within a single integrated system. While the PDP may still be used as a paper-based system, its usability will be greatly enhanced within the electronic medium. The final plans will all be in GIS format. This input will significantly improve the capability of the MMAA/PD in particular and the Qatar government in general to establish and constantly improve development objectives, policies, and development regulations at all four levels of planning. |
CGIS and Qatar's Land Information Center (LIC) have played a vital and significant role in realizing the efforts for a GIS-based plan. CGIS and LIC have been providing the project team with the necessary hardware and software support and also access to the data and technical expertise. The Planning Department has been working in close coordination with these two centers in evaluating the progress of the transfer of the plans on to the country's GIS and in ensuring that the plans follow the standards set by CGIS.
The PDP project also envisages building traffic and transport models for the country. The purpose of the models is to predict travel demand and transport network performance in order to estimate the consequence of the transportation and land use development plan. In addition, the models provide a multi-level basis for analysis ranging from broad regional and national traffic flow models to the detailed simulation and evaluation of city street flows in the Doha city center. One of the unique features of the transportation model, probably the only one of its kind in the world, is its interface to GIS. The GIS transportation model interface consists of a network interface and a land use interface. All the data related to the road network required by the transportation modeling software, EMME/2, is extracted from the related ARC/INFO GIS coverage for the road network using the network interface. The land use data required for calculation of trip generation/attraction is also extracted from the corresponding coverage using the land use interface. The network interface also transfers the network data, modified during the transportation modeling sessions back to the ARC/INFO coverage. It is hoped that once this plan is finalized that it will provide MMAA and other government agencies with an effective tool, which is dynamic and flexible in nature due to its GIS base, that it will guide and direct physical development in the country, and ensure efficient utilization of available resources to achieve healthy and sustainable physical environment for the residents of Qatar. |
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