Members’ Publication

The world has already entered into the Information Age where information regulates all types of activities. Developed countries have gained expertise dealing with the information in their decision support systems for planning, governing, service delivery and management of resources. With the “internet bust” of the last few years, ICT becomes an enormous engine of the development process. Bangladesh and other developing countries are yet to attain this technological benefit. At present, the Government of Bangladesh (GoB) is striving to turn the country into “Digital Bangladesh” by launching an ICT based planned development and management practices throughout the country. Optimum utilization and management of the resources through better planning and management of the facilities, improve the life standard of the city dwellers. ICT can ensure the best utilization of existing resources and ease the management process. In addition to that, ICT can generate virtual spaces for delivering services and creating employment opportunities, and thus can go over the limitation of physical spaces. The growing development trend indicates that the local government institutions will be the major hub of information communication in near future, albeit the easy storage, retrieval, analysis and integration of the spatial data with non-spatial datasets require the involvement of various central and local government institutes/departments simultaneously. A conceptual guideline is provided here for the professionals, engaged in urban planning and management in the country, about these changing circumstances and for helping them to be compatible with this knowledge and information based planning practices. This paper mainly examines the dimension and prospect of E-planning in Bangladesh and depicts the role of different stakeholders in this process. The ways in which urban planning and management practices may best be altered in this regard is also addressed.

Natural disasters, human displacement and human migration are associated with each other. Increased frequency and severity of natural disasters over the past recent years are not only displacing people but also exposing to enhanced unplanned urbanization by increasing the amount of disaster migrants to Dhaka city. To know the amount of disaster migrants, most disaster affected areas and spatial distribution of disaster migrant’s settlements, this paper aims at estimating the number of natural disaster induced migrants in Bangladesh and to show the spatial distribution of disaster migrants in slum settlements of Dhaka. This paper also aims at to monitor different hazards and disasters by applying disaster mapping in the pre and post management of any disaster event. Using GIS and Remote Sensing technology, the study compared existing satellite image with previous satellite image of the same location and tried to estimate disaster affected areas and number of displaced people under different disaster impacts such as flood, cyclone river bank erosion and drought. To calculate the number of migrants, this paper used Census Survival Ratio (CSR) method of United Nations, and number of disaster induced migrants for each districts are estimated from the calculated data. The movements of disaster migrants are presented by different maps from the estimated number of disaster migrants as a form of migration mapping. This paper contains mapping and analyzing primary data and secondary information. Modern technological tools of Arc GIS and Google Earth software have been used for mapping, modeling and data analysis. Historical Satellite images have been used for detailed and long term understanding of damage, physical change, human displacement and migration. The generated GIS maps of this paper present different disaster prone area, different environmental hazards, the dynamics of migration of the disaster migrants and spatial distribution of disaster migrant’s settlements in Dhaka. This paper also aims to explore why, the disaster affected peoples are migrating and what is their present condition in Dhaka. This is why, excessive migration to Dhaka, is affecting the planned growth of Dhaka. It is very necessary to take proper development and resettlement measures to reduce migration. This paper aims to introduce disaster mapping and migration mapping as tools of urban management and disaster management, to ensure the overall development of the country. Disaster mapping and migration mapping can be used for better understanding to take any development plan, because by this method which region needs more emphasis for development can be explored. So, disaster mapping, migration mapping and spatial distribution of disaster migrants can be used as a tool in urban planning and disaster management to reduce migration and to ensure better development of both the disaster affected people and the people of Dhaka city.