SMT201 AY2019-20T1 EX2 Darren Tan Yong Heng

Take-home Exercise 2

In this exercise, you are tasked to identify a location suitable for building a national Communicable Disease Quarantine Centre. The selected site must be located at Gombak planning subzone, with a contiguous area of at least 10,000m2 and it must meet the following decision factors:

• Economic factor: The selected site should avoid steep slope. This is because construction at steep slope tends to involve a lot of cut-and-fill and will lend to relatively higher development costs.

• Accessibility factor: The selected site should be close to existing local roads, namely: service roads and tracks. This is to ensure easy transportation of building materials during the construction stage.

• Health risk factor: The selected site should be away from population i.e. housing areas and offices in order to avoid disease spreading to the nearby population.

• Natural conservation factor: The selected site should be away from forested land, park, and water.

Maps depicting the target features within Gombak - Roads, Buildings, Natural Areas and Slope

The following map images depict factors taken into consideration for building a national Communicable Disease Quarantine Centre within Gombak. The four key factors are as follows - Accessibility Factor (Roads), Economic Factor (Slope), Health Risk Factor (Buildings) and Natural Conservation Factor

Accessibility Factor (Roads)

The task requires us to choose existing local routes namely: service roads and tracks. Hence, the image above depicts service and track roads within Gombak and ideally the new quarantine center should be built near to these roads identified to ensure easy transportation of building materials during the construction stage.

Health Risk Factor (Buildings)

Due to the sheer amount of buildings that are unlabelled, I choose to represent all the buildings using a single color code. However, it is still important to consider the position of the buildings within the map as the quarantine center needs to situated away from the population to avoid disease spreading to the nearby population.

Natural Conservation Factor

There are 3 main types of natural features within Gombak, namely forest, park, and water. The natural areas are located close to the edge of Gombak, with parks located close to the southern border of Gombak. Forest is located in the eastern part of Gombak and water is located near the northern tip of Gombak. As part of the task, it is essential to find a building spot located far away from natural areas.

Economic Factor (Slope)

The darker areas indicate that the slope within the area is steeper and likewise the lighter areas indicate areas with gentler slopes. Hence, it is important to avoid the darker areas as it corresponds to higher development cost.