Landuse Planning

Landuse Planning

The decisions we make today will have long-lasting impacts on our way of life. Smart choices are critical if we are going to achieve sustainable growth. Clark Labs' technologies offer a set of support tools that are particularly well-suited for resource allocation decisions. Innovative multi-criteria and multi-objective evaluation techniques as well as tools for uncertainty management provide decision makers unprecedented power and control over their choices.

Application areas include:
- Planning for smart growth
- Natural resource planning
- Landuse decision support
- Suitability mapping
- Visualization of alternatives
- Market integration
- Impact analysis
- Change analysis and prediction
- Habitat assessment and suitability

Analytical Examples: [click images to enlarge]


This screen shot illustrates some of the data products developed for a study on the effects of sea level rise on a coastal rice-producing area in Vietnam. Part of the study included prediction of future sea level and inundated areas. This portion of the study explicitly incorporated uncertainty in the elevation data as well as the projected sea level rise.


Image differencing is a common technique for change analysis. IDRISI includes output options for a simple difference image, a percentage difference image, a standardized (z-score) difference image, or a standardized class image (6 categories of z-scores).


GEOMOD is a new land change simulation modeling tool. It predicts the locations where land is likely to change from one category to another. In combination with the IDRISI statistical modules, such as ROC and VALIDATE, these tools allow users to measure the certainty of scenarios of future land change.


Markov Chain Analysis, a technique for predictive change modeling, is supported in IDRISI with the module MARKOV. Predictions of future change are based on changes that have occurred in the past.


The decision support tools in IDRISI allow planners and policy makers to move toward environmentally sustainable decisions. Tools such as consensus weighting procedures and heuristics, as in this image, allow the evaluation and allocation of land for multi-objective planning.


IDRISI includes an unparalleled suite of tools for multi-objective/multi-criteria decision support. Multiple suitability problems are defined in terms of factors, constraints, factor weights and risk-taking strategy. Then the composite suitability images for each objective are used together to best allocate areas to each objective. Rather than one-shot black-box solutions, this approach provides decision makers with understandable and defensible methods that can be iteratively improved. Here, industrial and commercial suitability are modeled.