11.522: UIS Research Seminar (Fall 2008) - Discussion notes
With GIS technology and spatial analysis methods permeating through conventional data management into planning decision-making, many efforts have been devoted to develop GIS-based land use planning models that are capable of forecasting and estimating the impacts of urban growth. Such land use planning models typically include simulation models such as UrbanSim, What if?, LEAM and exploration models like CommunityViz. However, these land use planning models, no matter simulation models or exploration models, all have their weak points. Specifically, simulation models, largely drawn from disaggregated data to make individual choice inferences, establish on local rules that lack high-level regulations and planning objectives. On the other hand, exploration models are only capable of measuring impacts from trivial and unanimous changes, thus inefficient to trade off among alternative yet conflicting land use plans. Given the nature that land use planning always involves various stakeholders' interests (e. g. economy growth versus. environment); there has been an emerging trend to integrate multiobjective optimization methods into land use planning models in order to balance among different stakeholders and to generate a set of alternatives instead of one.
In this session of seminar, I would like to start the discuss by reviewing current land use planning models, thereby giving a board sense of where land use optimization models situated among other models. Then I would like to give a brief introduction of multiobjective land use optimization models, several cases will be examined. Finally, in order to inject new life to this topic, I would like to promote exchange of views about how to make land use models produced in academic institutions less toy-like and how to bridge the gap between academic efforts and planning practices.
Godschalk, D., 2004, Land Use Planning Challenges: Coping with Conflicts in Visions of Sustainable Development and Livable Communities, Journal of the American Planning Association, 70(1): 5-13.
Gabriel, S., Faria, J., Moglen, G., 2006, A Multiobjective Optimization Approach to Smart Growth in Land Development, Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, 40: 212-248.
Ligmann-Zielinska, A., Church, R., Jankowski, P., 2008, Spatial Optimization as a Generative Technique for Sustainable Multiobjective Land Use Allocation, International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 22(6):601-622.
U.S. EPA, 2000. Projecting Land-Use Change: A Summary of Models for Assessing the Effects of Community Growth and Change on Land-Use Patterns. EPA/600/R-00/098. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, Cincinnati, OH.
Sui, D., 1998, GIS-based Urban Modelling: Practices, Problems, and Prospects, International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 12(7): 651-671.
Aerts, J., Eisinger, E., Heuvelink, G., Stewart, T., 2002, Using Linear Integer Programming for Multi-Site Land-Use Allocation, Geographical Analysis, 35(2):148-169.
1) What are the current general goals in planning practice? Are there any conflicting development goals that current urban planner are faced with?
2)Even though the choice of the final solution from the optimal alternatives is supposed to be the result of an informed decision-making process, quite frequently, owing to the lack of a suitable tool for evaluation, the final choice may not be the optimal solution. Therefore, given there are numerous scenarios; are there any ways to visualize/compare these alternative scenarios so as to facilitate the decision-making?
3) Due to the computation complexity of multiobjective integer programming, it is unlikely to enclose all possible conflicting objectives in the models at one time. How to compensate for this inadequacy?
4) How to lower the current land use planning models threshold in order to make it easy for planning community to utilize?
5) How planning demands shape GIS analysis methods? Will GIS techniques and analysis methods in turn influence planning process?
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