GIS APPLICATION IN ENVIRONMENTAL-PLANNING AND ASSESSMENT

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have become of increasing significance for environmental planning and assessment in recent years. One main reason for this is the need, in Environmental Planning, to compare a great number of area-related data describing the affected natural resources and their sensitivity related to the effects of impacts. Because GIS can be used to couple area-related data with their attributes, and can be used to overlay these, it represents a highly efficient instrument for such planning tasks. This paper describes some of the basic application methods by using a Geographic Information System. Project work and GIS application in connection with model-appoaches are demonstrated with several examples from existing project work: (a) MAB-project 6 - Ecosystem Research Berchtesgaden; (b) Environmental Impact Assessment Study for the Danube River construction works between Straubing and Vilshofen; (c) Determination of Noise Pollution Effects on Residents near the new airport Munich II; (d) Environmental Impact Assessment for the Federal Motorway A94. The chosen examples from research and planning projects have been worked out by using GIS and environmental modelling capabilities. For every project a different GIS database was created and evaluated