Galit Gilo

Master plan for location of schools

abstract:

The Municipal Engineering Administration began preparations of a master plan for allocation of educational facilities in Tel-Aviv-Yaffo.

During 1996 a planning tool was developed which enables dynamic planning of distribution of the educational facilities according to various criteria and desired time periods.

The tool enables interactive definition of all the decision-support elements and the selected criteria as well as processing of the existing data coverages, in order to create an optimal distribution plan.

The computerized system comprises of the following components:
Relevant data coverages:
- Streets and addresses
- Photogrammetrical mapping (minimum required)
- Land use
- Existing educational institutions
- Population
- Students (existing + expected)

A programmatic planning tool that takes into consideration all the decision-support elements
- Walking distance
- School capacity
- Free public areas
- Blocking lines (For example, highways)
and helps to determine the optimal distribution.

The system is interactive and allows the user to "play" with the specified components and also to see the resulting changes in the distribution immediately.

The planning tool described here is a basic tool which can be very easily adapted to be a planning tool for any type of system not necessarily in the area of education; for example:
Placement of business institutions (banks, ) based on desired population, walking distanced, and competitor's institutions.

The planners of the underground railway in Tel-Aviv use the above mentioned tool for examining the optimal population that will be served by the railway and for evaluating different alternatives for allocating the stations.

Introduction

The Municipal Engineering Administration began preparations of a master plan for allocation educational facilities in Tel-Aviv-Yaffo.

Locating correctly schools and other educational institutions in optimal locations provides an important service to the city's residents, by cutting walking distances from home to school.
In addition, according to the Israeli law, in cases where walking distance is greater than a certain length (specified for every age group) the municipality must provide rides to school at its expense.
The location of schools thus has economical implications by reducing the number of those rides.

The planning tool

During 1996 a planning tool was developed which enables dynamic planning of distribution of the educational facilities in order to create an optimal allocation plan.

The computerized system comprises the following components:

Relevant data:

i) Streets and addresses
ii) Photogrammetrical mapping
iii) Land uses
iv) Existing educational facilities
v) Students (existing + forecast)

A programmatic planning tool that takes into consideration all the decision elements and helps determine the optimal allocation:

i) Walking distance for a child from his home to his educational institution(real distance - along sidewalks)
ii) Capacity of school (existing + potential capacity after extension)
iii) Vacant public lots
iv) Blocking lines (e.g., highways, area boundaries that the student should not have to cross to reach the nearest school, administration boundaries, socio-economic considerations etc.)

The system is interactive and allows the user to "play" with the specified components(e.g., to change walking distance to a specific school, add/remove blocking lines, change capacity, remove an existing school or add a new school) and to see the resulting changes in the allocation, immediately.

In order to demonstrate the "user-friendliness" of the GIS system, we will show, using a number of outputs, a typical utilization of this system:

a) Layout of existing schools (each school symbolized by a circle of different color) and initial blocking lines.

b) Distribution of the forecast student population. Every address with one or more students is indicated by a green dot.

c) According to the 2 criterias: the maximum distance to each school, and the school's maximum capacity, the GIS system interactively execute the optimal allocation of students to a school. The remaining white areas contain students who where not allocated to a school for two reasons: the schools were full, and/or the distance to school is too great. Every number in a striped polygon indicates the amount of unallocated students in that area: 219, 370, 422, ...etc.

d) The possible solutions in our example can be:
- enlarging the school's capacity
- removing some of the blocking lines
- adding new schools
One or several combined solutions can be adopted.
To find locations for new schools we have to locate public lots available for new public building in the desired areas.

Therefore we shall lay out this data layer indicating automatically the available vacant public lots with red squares whose size is proportional to the lot size.

e) We shall now demonstrate two simple possible solutions. The first solution is based on:
- Building 2 new schools (indicated by sign).
Both schools have the full capacity of 540 students and maximum walking distance of 1500 meters.
- Removing blocking lines.

The second solution is based on:
- Building 3 schools: 2 small expending schools (capacity of 360 each) and one full school (capacity of 540 students).
- Removing blocking lines.

The system was approved by the ministry of education.

The planning tool described here is a basic tool that can be very easily adapted for any type of system not necessarily in the area of education, for example:
Placement of business institutions (banks) based on desired population, walking distanced, and competing institutions.

Galit Gilo
Head of GIS Division
Tel-Aviv-Yaffo Municipality
1 Rabin Sq
Tel-Aviv-Yaffo, Israel
Telephone: (972)-3-5217140
Fax: (972)-3-5217503
E-MAIL:gilo@tel-aviv.gov.il