GIS-based Planning Support System for transportation and industrial location analyses : a case study of the cokemaking sector in Shanxi Province, China

Abstract

I created a Shanxi Province GIS -based Planning Support System (SPGPSS) for transportation and industrial plant location studies of the cokemaking sector in Shanxi Province. By integrating database, map viewer, scripts, and professional models in the GIS environment, on the provincial level, I designed the SPGPSS to have capabilities of optimizing plant locations, transport routes and modes under the different scenarios and computing the corresponding cost, energy consumption, and pollution emissions in the transportation process. Policy makers and industrial organizations can utilize the SPGPSS to value the economic and environmental impacts from different policy possibilities and assist their planning decisions on location rearrangements and structural changes. On the plant level, a plant manager can use the SPGPSS to conduct spatial analyses and multi-plan valuations for an individual plant in the planning of transport routes and new plant location. By the applications of SPGPSS, I tested my hypothesis that combining cokemaking plants into several large-capacity plants or industrial parks is preferable to having them distributed throughout the area. From the perspective of total cost, the large-capacity plants and industrial parks instead of the distributed small-capacity plants would reduce the total cost both from the transportation and cokemaking process. From the perspective of total energy consumption and pollution emissions, however, the large-capacity plants and industrial parks would increase the total energy consumption and pollution emissions. Thus, my hypothesis is only partially proven.