A Conflict-Detecting and Early-Warning System for Multi-Plan Integration in Small Cities and Towns Based on Cloud Service Platform

Multi-plan integration (MPI) is a major effort initiated by China’s State Council for the purpose of streamlining development plans made by various public agencies in provincial and city governments. Small cities and towns are facing challenges to achieve MPI goals due to lack of technological infrastructure and professional expertise. This article presents a system to assist small cities and towns to carry out their MPI tasks. The system, named conflict-detecting and early-warning for MPI (CDEW4MPI) is developed based on a cloud service platform. CDEW4MPI enables small cities and towns in remote locations to detect inconsistency and conflicts among multiple plans. The system includes two modules. One is conflict-detecting, which identifies spatial conflicts in boundary designation among different plans from different agencies. The other is early-warning, which analyzes and reports potential encroachment of proposed local plans to urban growth boundary, the baseline for ecological protection, and the farmland under permanent preservation. CDEW4MPI was implemented as a demo project in Shennongjia Forestry District, a municipality in the western mountainous region of Hubei Province, China. The paper presents the design of CDEW4MPI and its implementation in Shennongjia and draws lessons from the Shennongjia case for broad interests in smart management of spatial resources.