Middle East Technical University Campus is located in an area to the west of Ankara, 7 km. from the city center. In order to help the University Administration, this area is being put in GIS for more effective management. So far the following information are collected and prepared as different layers; the boundary of the area with contour lines, stream network, geology, hydrogeology, vegetal cover and roads for the entire area, and road details including parking lots and the buildings for the campus part. Buildings, roads and streams are classified according to their types. This will be an on-going project since the number of buildings and other works are continuously increasing in the campus, but at least most of the existing situation is in GIS format now and updating will be easier. This paper covers the information of completed parts.

Middle East Technical University (METU, Figure 1) is founded in 1956 as a state university in Ankara with a special law passed in the Parliament of Turkish Republic. Different than the other Turkish Universities METU had a system similar to the American Universities and had a board of trustees till 1982. Then the governing system has been changed and made similar to the other Turkish Universities.

METU has the largest land, which is owned by a university in Türkiye, being 16.43 mi² and may be one of the few in the world having such a large land. This land is located to the west of Ankara, 7 km from the city center. The area is in north-south direction between Eskisehir highway and Gölbasi Village, on the Konya highway as seen in Figure 2. The campus part of the area covers approximately 100 hectares and there is also a lake with a surface area of 120 hectares in the METU land. Originally the area was almost bare soil, which is typical of Middle Anatolia. But now there is a forest, called METU forest, established by METU staff and students. So far more than 30 million trees are planted for this forest.

METU has five faculties (Architecture with three departments, Arts and Science with nine departments, Economic and Administrative Sciences with four departments, Education with seven departments and Engineering with fourteen departments), a Graduate School having four divisions for different departments, a School of Foreign Languages with two divisions and nine Interdisciplinary Graduate Programs.
 
 

METU land is being put into GIS as a project to help the University administration. The work is done in two parts, one being related to the entire land and the other related to the campus part only. During the work, map sheets of 1/5000 and 1/1000 scales are used. In addition to these, some detailed architectural drawings are also used for buildings. 151 map sheets of 1/1000 scale cover the whole METU land. They are studied in four groups, and the campus part is located in the first region, which is at the north.

1. Work done on the whole METU land

The information obtained for the whole METU area are put in GIS media as layers, (Arc/Info coverages). These layers are:

• The boundary of the area.
• Contour lines in the area to obtain the digital elevation model (Figure 3, Figure 4). For this both 10 m and 1 m interval lines are processed.
• The roads layer for the entire area is a simple one indicating only the type of the roads as asphalt or dirt.
• Waterway coverage has wet and dry beds plus the springs in the area(Figure 5).
• Geology, hydrogeology and landuse coverages (Figure 6, Figure 7 and Figure 8 ) are taken from a study made in Geological Engineering Department of METU by a graduate student, as his M.S. Thesis.

1. Work done on the campus part

 

The work for campus part is conducted in two parts. The first is about the buildings, which are approximately 450 in number, and the second part is about the roads in the campus.

 

1. Buildings in the campus

The sources for the information about the buildings in the campus came from 1/1000 topographic map sheets, aerial photographs taken in 1995 and the CAD drawings of the architects. They all needed to be geocoded and brought to the same coordinate system, which was very difficult for some cases. On the other hand the construction of new buildings makes continuous updating a necessity for the campus part in addition to the updating of the databases for the existing ones.

The buildings in the campus are grouped as follows:

• Academic buildings, where departments are located and education is held.
• Administrative buildings, the ones used solely for the administration of the University.
• Academic + administrative buildings, the ones which have both functions.
• Dormitories for the students.
• Housing units for academic and other personnel of the University.
• Social buildings.
• Shopping buildings.
• Sports buildings.
• Little huts used for different purposes.
• Buildings which are under construction.

In all these groups of buildings some of them have small food marts, some telling machines and some pay phones. This information is also indicated with the type of the building. In Figure 9, general view of campus is shown and the information seen when a building is clicked is given in Table 1.

3.1.1 Academic buildings

There are around 63 academic buildings in the campus. An example for academic buildings is given with those of Civil Engineering (CE) Department in Figure 10. CE Department has six buildings, whose level (floor) plans of the buildings are obtained and digitised roughly just to see what exist in each storey of each building. There is also a database for each building as shown in Table 2 for one of the CE buildings. When a room is clicked in a floor plan the information shown in Table 3 is seen.

3.1.2 Administrative buildings

In METU campus there are approximately 20 administrative buildings. Among these the one where president's office is also located is chosen for detailed study (Figure 11). Its floor plans are also obtained and checked with the actual situation since there were some alterations in recent years. After the corrections were made in the plans they were digitised and their data were collected (Figure 12).

3.1.3 Academic + Administrative buildings

Three of the buildings are used for both academic and administrative functions. The building, which holds university library, is an example for such buildings. Fine Arts Department and Cultural Affairs Division are also in this building. Their databases are shown in Tables 4, 5 and 6 respectively.

3.1.4 Social Buildings

These buildings are used for social functions and health center. There are about 19 of them. The example for the database of such buildings is chosen for University's Cultural and Congress Center, which is given in Table 7.

3.1.5 Housing units

Different types of housing units(Figure 13) exist on two sides of the campus as given below.

Housing units in the East Side of the campus (124 units):

• 28 villa type - 2 dormitories with 1 apartment each
• 6 buildings with 4 apartments each - 3 dormitories with 2 apartments each
• 2 buildings with 12 apartments each - 3 dormitories with 3 apartments each
• 1 building with 8 apartments - 1 dormitory with 8 apartments
• 1 building with 15 apartments

Housing units in the west side of the campus (total 191 units)

• 119 villa type
• 4 buildings with 6 apartments each
• 6 buildings with 8 apartments each

As a total there are 315 housing units in the campus and a database is prepared for their information. An example of the database is given in Table 8 for villa type housing units. The information about the present occupant is a little more than that of the previous occupants so that it will help for the parking lot and service bus requirements.

3.1.6 Dormitories

METU student population is around 20.000. One fourth of these students stay in the dormitories in the campus. All together there are 15 dormitories in the campus, three of which are constructed by the help of outside funds(Figure 14). A database sample related to the dormitories is shown in Table 9.

3.1.7 Sports buildings

In the campus there are four buildings used for sports activities in addition to a stadium, which seats approximately 10 000 people, and an outside pool.

3.1.8 Other buildings

The main groups of the buildings are covered in the sections above. The rest of the buildings are still worked on. Anyway a large group is about the little huts or barracks which are constructed to house some instruments or electrical transformers etc. or temporary storage places for buildings under construction.

3.2 Roads of the campus

The roads in the whole METU land are classified only as asphalt or dirt roads, but in the campus part a little more detail are given. In the roads coverage of this part the type of the road as asphalt, concrete, dirt, pavement, parking lot, green area, bus and minibus stops and others are included. The roads in the campus can be seen in Figure 9.

4. Results

This project started in late 1996 and although a lot of work is completed so far, it is by no means complete. At present the infrastructure of the campus is being put into GIS. After that part is completed the work will be held over to the University Administration for further work and mainly for updating. We are in the process of organising a small group for this purpose.