Explorations and Practices of Land Change Survey in the Background of Unifying Planning Departments and Land Departments

Administrative departments for urban planning (abbr. planning departments) and administrative departments for land resources (abbr. land departments) in China set up different surveying systems for land use with different standards for statistics, which renders the fundamental databases generated by the different surveying systems inconsistent. In order to unify the planning departments and land departments, Shenzhen, as a highly urbanized city, has designed a new annual fundamental survey system which could serve both the urban planning and land resources management. The survey system has the following three innovations. First, survey-specific land types are defined based on both the survey system for urban planning and that for land resources management, hence easily converted to the two survey systems; second, spatial units used for surveying are unified. The smallest survey unit is a land mass with only a single land use type or status and segmented out by ownership boundaries, administrative boundaries or linear features. Third, additional fields could be added into the fundamental databases, depending on the actual needs of urban planning and land resources management.