Rural development studies and geographical information systems

Development in the world is evaluated within the compass of the data covering economic and social welfare level. Ensuring the criteria necessary to be regarded as a developed country, in other words, increasing education, health, economic, and human life index is possible with the development of countries. In the developed countries, this development is progressed in a structure which is expanded to rural with urban characteristics. Development of the developing or underdeveloped countries will be possible with the development of the rural. In this context, rural development studies have an important place both in our country and in the world. Rural development is the development studies of the areas which are regarded as rural, and in these studies, just economic models are not sufficient, and social models are also developed. No matter what the development model is, use of geographical information systems in the studies which will ensure that the infrastructures and models to accompany these models can be offered, and applications which are bound to the geographical information systems playing a part in the analysis and design processes, have become significant. In this study, how the products, areas, residential areas and residential area expansion plans, concept of geographical signing which are subject to development should be planned in the rural development studies in accompany with the geographical information systems, and how these planning is/will be followed with GIS applications were explained.