Planning support systems

The Planning Support Systems Competence Area concentrates its R&D expertise on the following:

• The analysis, evaluation and simulation of urban and regional planning and development, as well as growth approaches and policies
• Supporting the three spheres of government for the best strategic (long-term) planning and investment decisions for the development of sustainable settlements and regions, improved service delivery and sustainable development.

Research areas include:

• Urban and regional planning

Growth management; functional regions and settlements dynamics; socio-ecological resilience and vulnerability; planning processes and instruments; intergovernmental and municipal planning; urban growth simulation; spatial and integrated urban and regional analysis; remote sensing; developing social facility guidelines and space requirements; accessibility analysis; typology development; urban morphological analysis; systems analysis; and scenario development

• Sustainable human settlements

Support the creation of functional settlements; housing options and urban development, such as medium-density mixed housing and gated communities; integrated settlement design for sustainability and planning and designing safer communities; water and sanitation research and policy input through to monitoring and evaluation; resource-efficient technology alternatives that support human settlements, i.e. appropriate water and sanitation technologies and the acceptability of these; a sanitation technology demonstration centre for public information purposes.

Research facilities and platforms

• Urban dynamics laboratory
• Geospatial analysis platform

Enquiries - Competence Area Manager:
Dr Louis Waldeck, tel 012-841-2473; email lwaldeck@csir.co.za

Published research highlights

	Geospatial Analysis Platform (GAP) for South Africa - Supporting strategic spatial analysis and planning This poster deals with GAP, a common, meso-scale geospatial platform for the assembly, analysis and sharing of strategic geospatial information.

	Equitable availability of social facilities The provision of social facilities, e.g. primary health care, sports fields and community halls, is a prerequisite of basic services. CSIR research investigates the sufficient and equitable availability of such services to the public.