GIS and Remote Sensing for Urban Planners Training Course

Course overview

Urban planning teams increasingly need to test proposals against parcel patterns, transport access, land-use controls, environmental constraints, population change and the observed condition of the built environment. Yet many planning maps remain static, difficult to reproduce, or disconnected from the spatial evidence behind a recommendation. This course helps urban planners turn geographic data and satellite imagery into defensible planning analysis: identifying suitable development areas, measuring service accessibility, monitoring urban expansion, and communicating trade-offs clearly to decision-makers and communities.

Participants work through an applied GIS and remote sensing workflow using ArcGIS Pro, QGIS, PostGIS and Google Earth Engine. They learn to structure planning geodatabases; clean and join census, parcel and infrastructure data; create thematic maps; perform buffers, overlays, network-based accessibility analysis and weighted suitability modelling. Remote sensing sessions cover imagery selection, visual interpretation, supervised classification, vegetation and built-up indices, change detection, and accuracy assessment. The emphasis is on methods planners can explain in a technical report, planning committee paper or development-control review.

Instructor demonstrations are followed by guided labs built around an urban growth and service-access case. Participants prepare a spatial evidence pack for a defined planning area, including a geodatabase, suitability model, change-detection outputs, accessibility maps and a concise methodology note documenting assumptions, data limitations and recommended actions. The final workshop requires participants to present findings as they would to a planning manager or multidisciplinary project team.

The course is designed for planners who already work with maps, development data or planning policy and need stronger analytical control over GIS and earth-observation evidence. It is particularly valuable for staff supporting local plans, masterplans, housing land assessments, transport planning, infrastructure programming and environmental planning.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Build a planning geodatabase that integrates parcels, zoning, census, transport, utilities and environmental-constraint layers
• Clean, geocode and join tabular planning data to spatial features using attribute rules and field calculations
• Produce publication-ready land-use, density, accessibility and constraint maps with appropriate symbology and classification
• Apply buffer, overlay and spatial-selection methods to assess development constraints and policy compliance
• Run network-based accessibility analysis to measure travel time to services, transit stops and community facilities
• Construct a weighted multi-criteria suitability model with documented criteria, scores, weights and sensitivity checks
• Classify satellite imagery and calculate NDVI and built-up indices to identify urban land-cover patterns
• Deliver a spatial evidence pack containing maps, change-detection results, model outputs and a planning recommendation

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Urban Planners — who need spatial evidence to support local plans, site assessments and policy recommendations
• Development Control Planners — who assess applications against zoning, access, infrastructure and environmental constraints
• Spatial Planning Officers — who maintain land-use evidence bases and prepare strategic planning documents
• Transport Planners — who analyse access to transit, schools, jobs and public facilities
• Environmental Planners — who map ecological constraints, green infrastructure and land-cover change
• Planning Data and GIS Officers — who support planners with reliable datasets, analysis workflows and map production

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should understand basic urban-planning concepts such as land use, zoning, parcels, development constraints, population data and service provision. They should be comfortable working with spreadsheets, file folders and map-based information, and ideally have used a GIS viewer or desktop GIS to open layers, inspect attributes and navigate a map. Prior programming, image-processing or database-administration experience is not required. The course teaches the required geoprocessing, raster-analysis and spatial-modelling workflow from an intermediate planning perspective, but it is not intended for participants who have never worked with digital maps or spatial data.

Training methodology

The instructor uses short planning-focused demonstrations to introduce each workflow, then participants apply it in ArcGIS Pro and QGIS using an urban growth case dataset. Labs progress from data preparation and map design to service-access modelling, development suitability analysis and satellite-image interpretation. Group reviews test how assumptions, weighting and classification choices affect a planning recommendation. Participants critique maps as planning evidence, not simply as graphics. On the final day, each participant adapts the workflow to a workplace planning question and prepares an application plan with required data, stakeholders and next actions.

Course outline

Day 1: Planning data foundations and cartographic evidence

• GIS data models for parcels, zones, networks, points and raster surfaces
• Coordinate reference systems and projection choices for urban-area analysis
• Planning geodatabase structure, feature classes, domains and metadata
• Importing CSV, CAD and shapefile data into ArcGIS Pro and QGIS
• Attribute cleaning, field calculations and joins for planning indicators
• Map classification methods for density, deprivation and land-use statistics
• Cartographic design for planning reports, consultation boards and committee papers

Workshop: Participants build a planning geodatabase and produce a land-use and population-density map for a designated urban district.

Day 2: Spatial analysis for development and infrastructure decisions

• Spatial queries for zoning, parcel size, ownership and development-status screening
• Buffer analysis for roads, waterways, utilities, schools and protected areas
• Overlay methods using intersect, union, clip and erase operations
• Proximity analysis for service catchments and infrastructure exposure
• Raster versus vector criteria for planning suitability studies
• Constraint mapping for flood risk, slope, setbacks and environmental designations
• Documenting analytical assumptions and data limitations in planning evidence

Workshop: Participants create a constraint map and shortlist candidate housing sites using spatial queries, buffers and overlay analysis.

Day 3: Accessibility and multi-criteria suitability modelling

• Network datasets, travel modes and impedance values for urban accessibility analysis
• Service-area analysis for schools, health facilities, parks and transit stops
• Origin-destination cost matrices for comparing neighbourhood access
• Walk-time and drive-time accessibility indicators for planning standards
• Criteria selection and scoring scales for land suitability models
• Weighted overlay and raster reclassification for development suitability
• Sensitivity testing of weights and thresholds in multi-criteria decisions

Workshop: Participants build and test a weighted suitability model for a mixed-use development scenario, then compare results under two policy weighting schemes.

Day 4: Remote sensing for urban observation and change analysis

• Landsat and Sentinel-2 imagery selection by resolution, date, cloud cover and planning purpose
• Image composites, band combinations and visual interpretation of urban features
• Spectral signatures of vegetation, water, bare soil, roofs and impervious surfaces
• NDVI and normalized difference built-up indices for urban monitoring
• Training samples and supervised land-cover classification
• Post-classification cleaning and accuracy assessment using confusion matrices
• Multi-date change detection for urban expansion and green-space loss

Workshop: Participants classify two dates of satellite imagery and produce an urban-expansion and green-space-change map with an accuracy summary.

Day 5: Spatial evidence packs and workplace implementation

• Combining GIS analysis and remote-sensing outputs into a planning evidence narrative
• Map layouts, legends, scale statements and source notes for formal planning documents
• Communicating uncertainty, classification error and model limitations to non-specialists
• Publishing reusable layers and map products through project folders and geodatabases
• PostGIS concepts for maintaining shared planning datasets
• Quality assurance checks for geometry, attributes, projections and analytical outputs
• Workflow design for recurring monitoring, site screening and policy evidence updates

Workshop: Participants complete and present a spatial evidence pack containing suitability, accessibility and change-analysis findings plus a workplace implementation plan.

Tools & standards covered

ArcGIS Pro, QGIS, Google Earth Engine, PostGIS

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions