ASM
Managing Korean Land
Jim Baumann is a staff writer at ESRI Inc.
In 1975, the government of Korea formed the Korea Land Corporation to acquire, manage, and develop land for the government and residents. KLC implemented a GIS in 1990 and began collecting and indexing information.
These datasets subsequently evolved into KLC’s spatial data warehouse, which reduced redundancy and brought to the agency an integrated platform that made it easier to access the latest available data. In addition, its common spatial data model and metadata development improved the quality of the data and helped establish an information-based workflow.
The warehouse stores more than a terabyte of data. It includes the Korea land information system, land suitability assessment, urban planning information system and the urban planning statistics system. This data, plus other datasets developed by the metropolitan governments in Seoul and Daejeon City, and other agencies, are part of South Korea’s national spatial data infrastructure.
In 2006, KLC implemented what it called the Spatial Information Knowledge System. This is a federated decision-support system based on ArcGIS Server software. Release 2 of Oracle 10g is used as the relational database management system.
It was implemented to support land planning, the management of land reserves, the analysis of land compensation, and the development of new residential and commercial districts.
It enables 400 KLC staff to access 125 layers of spatial data and use geoprocessing tools for analysis.
Applications were built using Microsoft’s .NET platform and the C# programming language. This has lowered the learning curve and training costs and helped increase the efficiency of the people using the system.
South Koreans are city dwellers; more than 50 per cent of the country’s residents live in Seoul, the nation’s capital, and its surrounding suburbs. Because of the continuing need to review urban housing initiatives, KLC began the implementation in this region. Today, it is used throughout the country.
A key function is the evaluation of land for potential housing projects, including land acquisition and compensation to current landowners. Forty staff members use the system to analyse potential sites.
After selecting a land area from datasets of administrative boundaries, a digital elevation model is included to determine if the specified area is suitable for development. Areas meeting geographic requirements, such as slope specifications, are then saved for further processing. Thematic geographic layers – including protected habitats, rivers and streams, roadway networks, local utilities, hazardous materials, and regulations – are overlaid on the specified area.
The results are then published, and other staff can download them for additional processing. Acceptable areas are designated as development reserved lands. If a specified area includes enough land for housing development, staff will analyse the individual parcels included in the designated location. This includes soil composition, land value, environmental regulations and traffic analysis.
If the parcel is determined to be suitable for housing development, KLC purchases the land. There are a number of steps that need to be followed. Prior to automation, this took more than three months. Today, the entire process takes less than a week.
