Digital urban planning oriented data warehouse constructing supported by GIS: Taking Greater Beijing regional planning as a case

A great large of mass data has to be dealt with in the process of digital urban planning. However, the data structures of the mass data which distribute in the different fields are different from each other, and it is very difficult for the urban planner to analyze and integrate the data. How to convert the data from the different fields into a unified format, to integrate and store the data together, and to analyze the data to assist the decision-making efficiently is a big issue which every urban planner faces. The data warehouse appeared some years ago, which is a subject-oriented, integrated, steady-going, and the historical data included data set. It can be used to support the process of decision-making. To integrate GIS, Data Warehouse, Cloud Computing, and other new information technology with the digital urban planning effectively is a very valuable research field. Taking Greater Beijing (which includes Beijing, Tianjin, and the north of Hebei province) regional planning as a case, the research achievements in both china and overseas were analyzed. This paper discusses how to construct the Greater Beijing data warehouse for the regional digital urban planning in order to support the decision-making effectively based on data mining. Microsoft SQL Server database management system, ArcGIS information center are used to be the platform to construct the data warehouse. A prototype of the data warehouse about Greater Beijing is built according to the population, the land-use in the process of Greater Beijing regional planning. It can integrate the data from the different fields, multi-dimensionally analyze the data stored in the data warehouse by On-Line Analysis Processing. And the prototype can find the useful knowledge by data mining based on the special professional model, support the decision-making of Greater Beijing urban planning. Based on the research of Greater Beijing data warehouse constructing process, and by comparing with the successful warehouse application, this research analyzes the characteristics and essential of the warehouse functions, and the influence on the decision-making of data mining. According to this research, it is clear that the digital urban planning system based on the data warehouse can improve the efficiency of data-using largely, achieve the maximum information-sharing, support the basis for decision-making, is better than the relational database management system in the field of integrating data and collecting the feedback information, and can store the different models relating with the decision-making in the special fashion. It is a valid mode of the decision-making system.