MANAGEMENT OF ILLEGAL SLOPE LAND USES IN TAIPEI CITY 
Jenug-Hsiung Wu, Ph. D.,Division Head 
Chen Gau Der, Branch Chief 
Bureau of Reconstruction, Taipei Municipal Government 
39 Chang-An Road, Taipei, Taiwan, R. O. C. 
Mu-Lin Wu, Professor 
Civil Engineering Department, National Pingtung Institute of Polytechnology 
P. O. Box 17-164, Taichung, Taiwan 40098, R. O. C. 
Commission IV 
ABSTRACT: 
Illegal slope land uses in Taipei City is now managed by a 3-D GIS. Where are they and who are liable to a 
fine are identified on the ground and in personal computers. An automatic process implementing 
WINDOWS 3.0 Chinese version was developed and configured as a module of the 3-D GIS. All illegal slope 
land use locations need further management prescription or a second fine can be automatically shown on a 
color monitor. All paper work is simply a process of mouse clicks. 
KEY WORDS: 3-D GIS, Slope land uses. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
Bureau of Reconstruction, Taipei Municipal 
Government is in charge of slope land uses 
management to insure that soil and water conservation 
at slope land will not be jeopardized. Illegal slope land 
uses were usually monitored by a traditional approach. 
That was a process of about six days from identifying on 
the site and till issuing a fine to its land owner. A second 
fine has to be issued if there is no improvement has 
been taken. 
A self-developed 3-D GIS was implemented at one 
watershed to demonstrate that soil and water 
conservation can be facilitated (Wu and Liao, 1991). A 
full GIS functionality may be too complicated for 
untrained users to use properly (Mark and Gould, 
1991). A GIS should provide limited functionality, 
chiefly viewing and browsing, for the general public. It 
is desirable that a GIS can provide an automatic or 
semi-automatic process to take care all paper work 
required for a soil and water conservation management 
prescription. A smooth interaction can be achieved that 
every one can implement a module in a GIS to identify 
land parcels violating the soil and water conservation 
regulation on sites and find out their land owners. This 
paper will discuss how an interaction was made to 
make a process of six days work into a single day. 
2. METHOD 
2.1 Identifying Illegal Slope Land Uses on Sites 
Identifying illegal slope land uses has to be performed 
on sites by an inspector. A notebook computer is very 
useful in this regard. A module of a GIS is configured 
that only viewing, browsing, and overlay functionalities 
are provided. One user has to input a map sheet 
number and to zoom out a portion of the sites. On the 
681 
color monitor that land parcel numbers can be 
identified. A color photo has :c be taken as a proof that 
might need in the court. All pictures were scanned into 
a computer and savec as image tiles. 
2.2 Finding Out the Land Owner 
If land parcel numbers were identified on a personal 
computer, then the land owners can be extracted from 
the data base quite easily. À new file will be created to 
monitor all land owners who are violating the soil and 
water conservation regulation. À fine will be issued to 
the land owners accordingly. 
2.3 Monitoring All Identified Land Parcels 
Monitoring all identified land parcels is simply a 
process to insure that proper measure has been taken 
by the land owners to achieve soil and water 
conservation. A small program was written in Visual 
BASIC to automatically display those land owners have 
to be fined one more time based on date. In a 
windowed environment that text files, images files, 
digital parcel maps, and land uses maps are all can be 
reviewed and browsed by mouse clicks. Every one at 
Bureau of Reconstruction can implement the 
monitoring process because of its simplicity and no 
training is required. The cultural differences between 
an English user and a Chinese user are taken cared. 
Interface programs are all adaptable to one single user 
in an all Chinese environment. This is a function 
provided by the WINDOW 3.0 Chinese version. 
2.4 Paper Work 
Management of illegal slope land uses need a little bit 
of paper work. In a bureau level that several tables are 
required. A spread sheet program was used to compile 
all tables that were usually made manually. All