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Kesibumantan is a project under the module SMT201 Geographic Information Systems for Urban Planning by Professor Kam Tin Seong in Singapore Managament University (SMU).
In Bahasa, Kesibukan means hustle and bustle. Since the project involves studying Kalimantan Timur (East Kalimantan) for Indonesia’s new capital, we decided to name the project Kesibumantan which is a combination of Kesibukan and Kalimantan.
Jakarta, Indonesia’s current capital, has long been struggling with environmental problems. The seawall constructed to protect north Jakarta from the sea is also decreasing by an estimated 25cm per year, Jakarta is sinking very fast and facing an increasing risk of major flooding as days go by. Moving the capital was thus deemed necessary to spread the economic activities, reduce traffic gridlock and also decrease the population density in the overcrowded Java island that is home to almost 60% of the population.
On the other hand, Kalimantan has a very strategic location as it is located in the centre of Indonesia, making it a suitable location for a capital. After conducting in depth studies for 3 years, the government has decided that the new capital will be built in part of North Penajam Paser regency and a part of Kutai Kartanegara regency in East Kalimantan. Most of the government offices, parliament, military and police headquarters will be relocated to the new capital while Jakarta continues serving as Indonesia’ financial and commercial hub.
Source: Wildfires spread to planned site of new Indonesian Capital, Mongabay
According to President Joko Widodo, the relocation of the capital would cost 466 trillion rupiah ($32.7bn). It would thus be important to analyse a variety of factors such as accessibility, economic, transportation, flood risk, safety hazards, environment and other important factors to select a suitable capital site so that precious resources and fundings are not wasted especially in the midst of a pandemic.
As such, in this project, we studied the selected area (“study area”) and prepared a report of survey highlighting key insights including population density, transportation accessibility, hazard areas including forest fire hotspots and flood risks, and current settlement areas. Finally, site suitability analysis was conducted to recommend the most suitable area as Indonesia’s new capital.
In this project, we studied sub-districts and districts of:

Our first objective is to prepare a report of survey covering these aspects of our study area to answer these important questions:
Our second objective is to conduct site suitability analysis using Raster based GIS Multiple-Criteria Decision Analysis (GIS-MCDA) to recommend a suitable site as Indonesia’s new capital, tapping onto insights we obtained earlier from objective 1.
In this section, we outlined the maps created for each of the 5 themes.
For population and demographics, we analyzed the economically active population and population density to determine areas with high population density. For additional insights, sex ratio analysis was also conducted.
For economic and business, we determined which are the areas with high agriculture and open mining. Additionally, we analyzed the distribution of bank locations, retail and trade.
Distribution of the available transportation modes including air, water and road was analyzed. Additionally, road density and road intersection analysis was also conducted. For communication, we studied the distribution of telecommunication towers.
For environment and hazard, we identified areas with high risks of forest fires and flood. Additionally, areas with huge plots of forests and mangrove forests were also identified.
For infrastructure, we studied water and energy facilities, alongside sources of energy and buildings distribution in our study area.
The 8 factors considered in this analysis are as follow:
The team first got together to rank the 8 factors in order to derive the AHP scores. The factor maps were then created, followed by the combined AHP Suitability Layer. From there, we segregated the sites into suitable/not suitable and finally derived our potential site as Indonesia’s new capital.
In our analysis, we explained why Safety Hazard, Accessibility and Sea Transport are considered the most important factors, followed by a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of the potential site.
| Theme | Person in Charge |
|---|---|
| Population and Demographic | Hui Qi |
| Economic and Business | Hui Qi |
| Transport and Communication | Winnie |
| Environment and Hazard | Winnie |
| Infrastructure | Shereen |
| Factor | Person in Charge |
|---|---|
| Accessibility | Winnie |
| Economic | Winnie |
| Water Transportation | Winnie |
| Air Transportation | Winnie |
| Safety Hazard | Hui Qi |
| Environment Sustainability | Hui Qi |
| Flood Risk | Shereen |
| Building Density | Shereen |
| Factor | Person in Charge |
|---|---|
| Poster | Shereen |
| Website | Winnie |
| Report Clean Up | Hui Qi |
| Metadata | Hui Qi |