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LAND, PUBLIC WORKS AND UTILITIES
which must be approved by the Land Development Policy Committee. The document is constantly kept under review to take account of changes in government policies, demog- raphic characteristics and other social and economic trends. Sections revised during the year dealt with electricity, gas, telephone services, radio and broadcast communications, community and commercial car parking, noise, waste management and planning, rural environment and urban landscape.
Surveys in land and floor uses covering the whole territory were conducted or updated to provide the basic input in the preparation of both statutory and administrative plans. Special planning studies, such as the impact of office automation and the forecast of land supply in the territory, were also carried out during the year to provide information in the formulation of land development policies. To expedite the retrieval of planning informa- tion and to achieve greater efficiency and accuracy, work began on developing and maintaining computer systems for the storage and processing of planning data.
During the year, work continued on the formulation of a new type of planning statement setting out the implications of the government's overall planning and development objectives as they apply to each of the five sub-regions into which the territory has been divided for planning purposes. Once all these statements are formalised and approved, they will describe the territorial context within which district and local plans, both statutory and administrative, will be prepared, revised, assessed and monitored.
Survey
The Survey Division of the Lands Department is mainly engaged in the revision and production of topographical and special use maps of Hong Kong, land title boundary surveys, geodetic surveys, large scale basic mapping, aerial photography and photo- grammetry, and reprographic services.
The territory has a comprehensive map coverage from the basic mapping series at 1:1 000 scale to the 1:200 000 scale topographic series. The cyclic revision programme for some 3 500 standard map sheets was maintained and the new 1:5 000 series was extended into the rural areas of the New Territories. The Hong Kong Streets and Places Guide and the Countryside Series Sheet 3 for Lantau and Islands were redesigned and reprinted. There was an increase in requests from other government departments for cartographic services for special uses such as civil aviation requirements, transport, country parks, electoral boundary maps, and a new geological series at 1:20 000 scale covering the entire territory.
There is a high demand for cadastral surveys in the New Territories with the emphasis shifting from the new towns to the village areas where boundary surveys for village house lots are being carried out. In the urban areas, cadastral surveys for the alienation of government land, allocation of land for government purposes and the re-establishment of boundaries of old lots for redevelopment remained the major tasks.
The geodetic control networks, both horizontal and vertical, have been maintained and extended as required for mapping, engineering and cadastral surveys.
The Air Survey Unit, with the aid of the Royal Hong Kong Auxiliary Air Force, continued to provide aerial photography for engineering designs, volumetric calculations of quarries and reservoirs, environmental studies and the large scale mapping programme being carried out by the Photogrammetric Unit. Vertical and oblique photography, using an air survey camera in an RHKAAF helicopter, has been particularly useful in obtaining photographs of dangerous slopes.
The processing of field survey data and plotting of record plans for cadastral surveys and large scale site plans has been rationalised with the installation of three sets of
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