Geoinformatics for guiding industrial location in punjab Pakistan

The way industries are located in a region has profound impact on its environment. Urban and regional planners have been mostly concerned with locating industries for economic development. Environmental impact assessment (eia) has been their main tool for dealing with environmental issues related with industrial locations. Even the new glorified form of eia, strategic environmental assessment (sea), is for evaluating plans and programs and not a theoretical approach that could form the basis of policy formulation for industrial locations. This paper presents a new approach that attempts at determining the types and volumes of industries that may be allowed in different parts of a region without violating the limits natural environment. The new environment-based approach in meant to be for developing countries and its application has been demonstrated in a case study of Punjab province, Pakistan. Using the understanding of planning support systems and the conditions in the study region, the environment-based approach was translated into a methodology having four modules. The first three analytical modules cover three important aspects of regional planning (land, water, accessibility) and are a fair cross-section of current techniques (gis based overlay methods, hydrological modeling and location/allocation methods). The fourth and last module sheds light at the policy and planning implications of the findings of the three earlier modules of the methodology.