See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/228948588

A Spatial Decision Support System for evaluation various land uses in built up
urban area

Article · January 2005

CITATION READS

1 483

5 authors, including:

Mohammad Taleai Saadi Mohammad Mesgari

Khaje Nasir Toosi University of Technology Khaje Nasir Toosi University of Technology
103 PUBLICATIONS   580 CITATIONS    80 PUBLICATIONS   495 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Mohammad Ali Sharifi Richard Sliuzas

University of Twente University of Twente
77 PUBLICATIONS   584 CITATIONS    111 PUBLICATIONS   1,630 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Developing a planning and management support system for irrigation management View project

Urban management after an earthquake View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Richard Sliuzas on 20 May 2014.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 A Spatial Decision Support System for evaluation various
land uses in built up urban area
M.Taleai, PhD candidate
Geomatics Faculty, K.N.Toosi University of Technology, Iran
taleai@alborz.kntu.ac.ir

Dr. M.S. Mesgari

Geomatics Faculty, K.N.Toosi University of Technology, Iran
Mesgari@kntu.ac.ir

Dr. A.Sharifi
Department of Urban-Regional Planning and Geo-Information Management, ITC, The Netherlands
alisharifi@itc.nl

Dr. R.Sliuzas
Department of Urban-Regional Planning and Geo-Information Management, ITC, The Netherlands
sliuzas@itc.nl

Dr. N.Barati
Tehran studies and planning center, Iran

Abstract:

Urban Land Use Planning (ULUP) requires the combination of large volumes of high quality and timely information and
proper land use decision models. These are the key factors in applying spatial decision support system (SDSS) as a tool in
supporting ULUP.
Notwithstanding the huge abilities of GIS in analyzing spatial data, for many complex land use planning problems, current GIS
are lacking mathematical modeling and simulation capabilities necessary in land use planning. A proper response to these
shortcomings is the development of SDSS.
However, many previously-used models/methods used for ULUP can not be easily modeled in and used by GIS and SDSS.
Therefore, for using of GIS and SDSS unlimitedly and beneficially, a fresh look is necessary to develop new models/methods and
procedures in the field of urban land use planning activities.
This paper explains a developed GIS-based method for evaluation of different Land Use/Utilization Types (LUT) in built up
parts of urban area. This method can be used for assessing different usages of urban lands and generating alternative land use
plans using of GIS and DSS. It introduces a GIS-based decision support system to help urban land use planners in analyzing the
suitability of current LUTs in built up urban area according to some quantitative and qualitative criteria. It can also be used to
determine problems related to various LUTs in such built up urban area.
In this method, we have tried to take a new viewpoint to some traditional concepts in urban planning such as Compatibility
Matrix (each LUT in an area should not bring down the usability of other groups of land use types), Desirability Matrix
(suitability of each site for its currently used LUT), Capacity Matrix (each LUT has a area of influence depend on it's activities)
and Dependency Matrix (each LUT needs other special LUTs within or in its vicinity to be run and used by people properly and
efficiency). In other words, we have integrated GIS with the related rules and criteria represented in the mentioned matrices to
develop a SDSS for assessment of various urban LUTs.

Key words: GIS, SDSS, Urban Planning, Detailed Land Use Evaluation.

1. Introduction

The world is rapidly urbanizing. Huge areas are being covered by cities and towns every year. The established
areas of the cities are constantly changing as new uses and buildings are added. Therefore, management of this rapid
changes require a level of planning that is rarely possible by using conventional techniques. Today’s affordable
computers and application software for handling and supporting geographic information and decision-making models
(known as DSS/GIS) have the potential to allow planners to keep pace with rapid urban development.
Sustainable development requires that processes of change from now to the future and their consequences and
impacts should be modeled wherever possible so that unforeseen consequences can be minimized. Therefore using
some new and computerized system and techniques that can assist urban planers and managers to over come to their
current problems is very essential.
Geographic information system (GIS) has increasingly been used for many applications including urban and
regional land use planning. Although, GIS usefulness has already been verified in practical operations, but it is
strongly believed that the GIS science/technology is used only to a small part of its full capacity. Despite of the huge
capabilities of these systems to manipulate, analysis, and display spatial data, for many complex land use planning
problems, GIS, Solely, cannot adequately support decision making [7]; [8]. Current GIS are lacking mathematical
modeling, iterative equation solving, and simulation capabilities necessary in land use planning. Furthermore, GIS
are not flexible enough to accommodate decision maker’s preferences into the decision [7]; [3]; [12]. One response
to these shortcomings is the development of Spatial Decision Support Systems (SDSS) which are explicitly designed
to support decision process for complex spatial problems. SDSS provide framework for integrating database
management systems with analytical models, graphical display capabilities, and the expert knowledge of decision
makers [8].
However, the usefulness of GIS and SDSS will be limited if one tries to implement the new technology while
keeping the traditional procedures and work habits. It is necessary to seek a fresh look and development new models,
procedures and strategies. In the field of land use planning, the challenging and most needed research includes the
development of new methods of generating viable and complete set of alternative plans [12], which is the theme of
this paper.
The purpose of this paper is to introduce a spatial decision support system (SDSS) which integrates GIS with
analytical models for evaluation of different land use types. The paper formulates and applies an approach to land
evaluation in built up area that can be used by planners in physical land use planning and land development projects.
The suggested approach finally helps to create a spatial decision support system for land use planning that responds
to the need to incorporate many factors into the analysis, and incorporate expert knowledge and planner’s
preferences. The interaction with the decision makers provides means for refining the output and assessing the
implications of various strategies.
The proposed evaluation method comprises four matrices defined as follows:
• Compatibility Matrix is a measure of how much a LUT in an area brings down the usability of other
groups of land use types,
• Desirability Matrix describes the suitability of each site for its currently used LUT,
• Capacity Matrix represents an area of influence for each LUT depending on it's activities,
• and finally Dependency Matrix defines the needs of each LUT to other special LUTs within or in its
vicinity to be run and used by people properly and efficiency.
These matrices are used as tools to evaluate various urban land use types.

2. Scope: Detailed Urban Land Use Planning (DULUP)

Physical planning is being carried out in different phases and levels including: national, regional (multi province),
sub-regional (multi county), and urban comprehensive (master) and detailed (zoning) urban planning (DUP).
Local level of planning is divided into master planning and detailed urban planning in accordance with the
planning hierarchy. The master plan is an instructive plan designed for the physical development of an urban area. It
is comprehensive, general, long-term and overall in nature.
On the other hand, the detailed plan is a more detailed physical plan for a specific area within the jurisdiction of
the master plan. It follows instructions of the national comprehensive development plan, regional plan and the county
(city) master plan. It covers subjects such as population, land use, environmental protection and conservation,
Economic development, public facilities, transportation system and urban disaster prevention and Land-use planning.
Detailed urban plan is the basic plan for governments to engage in urban development and management so it should
be feasible, concrete, short to medium term and partial in nature.
Land-use planning is one of the most significant parts of the DUP, which defines the city territory’s organization,
its uses, and the size of the plots. In a typical detailed urban land use plan, lands can have different land use types
such as residential, commercial, public and institutional, industrial, nature and green areas, highways, arterial roads,
streets, vacant land etc. This research is related to detailed urban land use planning. The goal of the research is to
design and develop an evaluation method on the basis of SDSS to help planners in evaluating current situation of
different land use types. On the basis of the result of this evaluation, planners can define problems related to current
land uses and propose necessary strategies and plans to overcome them.
It is obvious that land use planning function has interaction with other issues of urban planning such as
transportation, housing, population control etc. This research however will be concentrating on land use planning
only and will not cover others urban planning studies. Nevertheless, the result and guidance of other functions and
studies of urban planning will be considered as input to our land use planning activities.

3. Evaluation Criteria

In comprehensive (master) plan of urban development, Land Per Capita (LPC) of each urban land use is
determined. Latter, the planners involved in detailed ULUP, should considers such LPC for each group of land use
types (residential, industrial, green area, …). In traditional procedure of urban land use planning LPC is considered
as a basis for determining the demand for new land in each group of land use type.
It should be noted that in some cases, the total LPC of a land use type in each district of city is sufficient and close
to the defined standards, yet the distribution of that land use type inside the district is not well-compatible with the
distribution of population. In addition, the interaction between different land use types such as reciprocal effects,
their compatibility, etc., should be included in the formulation of the land use plan.
In such cases, we propose to use other factors to determine problems related to existing situation of various land
use types and to determine demanded land. These factors are as follows:
Compatibility
Each land uses in an area should not bring down the usability of other groups of land use types. The degrees
used in some documentation on compatibility are: fully compatible, relatively compatible, relatively incompatible
and fully incompatible.
To determine the degree of compatibility between various groups of urban land use types, first, planners should
determine requirements for each group of land use types. Then, by comparing the characteristics of each group of
land uses and studying the effects and correlations between them, planner can determine the degree of
compatibility between different land use types.
Desirability (Suitability)
To evaluate this factor, planners compare the requirements of each land use type with the characteristics of its
site. In other word, planner should determine the suitability of each site for its current land use type. These
characters could be area, position, slope, soil type, topography, accessibilities etc.
Capacity
Each land use type has a special and defined scope in an urban area (geographical/operational scope). This can
be defined as the area of influence for each type of land use. For example, a primary school, a high school, a
faculty and a university have different geographical scope. In other words, usually in LUP, different geographical
scopes are taken into account, such as neighborhood, community, region and city. Therefore, the dependency
between each land use and its proper level of geographical scope should be considered. For example, a university
affects the whole city, a high school refers to its district and a primary school refers to its neighborhood. Therefore,
it is necessary that land use plans cover the demands for each land use types in different geographical scopes of a
city, separately and completely.
Dependency
Quite often, a special land use needs other special land uses in its vicinity in order to be run and used by people
properly. In other words, usually there are many mutual or even multiple dependencies among land use types. For
example, a residential area without education centers, retail stores, etc is not a comfortable place to live in.
Therefore, planners should determine the amount of dependencies between different land use types and define the
land use types that should be close in order to serve an active and livable society.

In summary, the question that we try to answer in this paper is how to determine the problems related to current
situation of land use types and how to define the criteria affecting these problems.

4. Methodology

As explained earlier, urban land use planners use some quantitative and qualitative criteria to determine parcel-
based problems related to existing situation of various land use types. Evaluation criteria include many different
physical, social, economical and environmental factors.
In this research, at first, we studied documents and standards related to urban land use planning and extracted
information about necessary factors and criteria. Then we classify these factors and define their role and weight in
constructing four suggested matrices, i.e. compatibility, suitability, capacity and dependency matrix (Fig 1). Second,
we tried to develop related matrix for each LUT separately, according to the relations between LUTs. Third, we
attempted to use these matrices to evaluate efficiency level of each parcel according to its land use type. According
to Fig 2, in a developed region of a city, two main category of land exit: built up (developed) and vacant lands.
Accordingly we consider different rules for the development/improvement of each of them.

Land use Unit (Parcel)

Evaluation
criteria

Evaluation Matrices

Compatibility Matrix Suitability Matrix Capacity Matrix Dependency Matrix

Land-use improvement models

Changing the Change in the matrices

Improving Land-use
Criteria combination

Fig 1. Evaluation of current land use types

Developed (built up) Region

Built up land Vacant land

Evaluation of the Evaluation of the

criteria (matrix) criteria (matrix)

Developed parcel with Developed parcel with Suitable land for Not suitable for
appropriate land use inappropriate land use development development
(to be changed)

Parcel for rehabilitation Suggested parcel for

and definition a new development
land use

Fig 2. Different treatments for evaluating two major land use types in Built up region

5.Case Study

The proposed model is used to evaluate different land use types in two districts of 7th municipal region of Tehran.
This municipal region is one of the oldest regions of Tehran with varieties of land uses and is near to the center of the
city (Fig 3). Two selected districts (Fig 4) cover an area of 500 hectares, from which 492 hectares are built up land
and the rest are vacant land (Fig 5).

Fig 3. Position of case study region related to other 22 municipal regions of Tehran city

Fig 4. Position of two selected districts for applying case study

 Fig 5. Area covered by each land use type in two selected districts
6. Evaluation of Different Land Use Types

In the following, we provide a general view on the residential land use assessment on the basis of suggested
matrices. The practical execution of the methods is not included.

6.1 Assessment of Land Use Compatibility

As stated earlier, Compatibility Matrix refers to this concept that each land use types in an area should not bring
down the usability of other groups of land use types. The degrees used in some documentation for this
compatibility are: fully compatible, relatively compatible, relatively incompatible and fully incompatible. Table 1
shows the compatibility criteria of residential land use type with other urban land use types, extracted from
available standards and documents.

Table 1. Compatibility matrix for residential land use type

Land use types Residential Complex
Residential
Kid's park 0 0
Local scaled park 0 0
Park
District scaled park 1 1
Regional scaled park 2 2
Local scaled (doctor office, pharmacy…) 0 0
District scaled ( general clinic) 2 2
Medical and Health
Regional scaled (professional clinics) 4 3
City scaled (professional hospital) 4 4
Kindergarten 0 0
Primary school 0 0
Educational Secondary school 0 0
High school 3 2
Technical school 3 3
Daily & Weekly Shopping 0 0
Economical Monthly Shopping 2 1
Yearly Shopping 2 2
Local scaled (sport land for kids) 0 0
District scaled ( sport land for young 1 0
Sport
person / small stadium)
Regional scaled (stadium) 3 2
Local scaled (repairing units) 2 2
Regional scaled (light non-polluted 3 3
Industrial
industry)
Polluted and heavy industry 4 4

0: Fully compatible 1: Moderately compatible 2: Neutral

3: Moderately incompatible 4: Fully incompatible

6.2 Assessment of Land Use Suitability

Also as declared earlier, suitability matrix refers to desirability of each land (site) for its current land use. Fig.6
presents the important criteria for evaluating the suitability parameter of residential land use.

6.3 Assessment of Land Use Capacity

As mentioned earlier, Capacity Matrix refers to this idea that each land use types has own geographical scale
(area of influence) based on its activity. For instance, University has city scale, High school has regional scale, and
Primary school has local scale. It's clear that residential land use type has local scale, so for this kind of land use
type the capacity isn't an essential factor.

Area
Physical
criteria
Slope

High voltage lines

Residential
land use Hazardous
Flood planes
Zones
Fault boundary

...

Road
Accessibility Utilities
Infrastructure

Public
transportation

Fig 6. Suitability criteria for residential land use type

6.4 Assessment of Land Use Dependency

As stated earlier, Dependency matrix refers to this concept that a special land use needs other special land uses
in its vicinity in order to be run and used by people properly. In other words, usually there are many mutual or
even multiple dependencies among land use types. To have a livable society, there should be a proper access from
residential lands to various facilities and activities such as park, sport land, medical buildings etc. Therefore, for
residential land use type we can consider this dependency as Fig 7. This figure shows the related criteria tree
represented in SMCE module of ILWIS software. According to this figure, a residential parcel need to have access
to other land use type and activities such as park, educational, medical, utilities infrastructure to act as active and
livable as it should.

6.5. Factor Importance Weights

The important piece of information that should be associated with different factors and criteria is the importance
weights. Since different factors have varying degree of influence on the properness of a particular land use type, it
is an important property of any evaluation method to allow measurement of the relative weights of factors/criteria
[2]; [13]; [20]. The determination of the relative importance of each criterion is a problem that highly depends on
individual preference or judgment supplemented by weighting methods. A number of weighting methods are
devised to facilitate scaling the weights of factors based on expert's preferences.
In this research structured pairwise comparison methods is used to define importance weights. In this method, at
first, criteria are ranked from more important to less important ones. Then, for determining the distance between
these ranks, "very important" or "less important" linguistic variable were used. Next, according to the rules of this
method, we calculated importance weight of each measured criteria in a decision tree. These weighting methods
are used in the creation of suggested matrices.
For example, for residential land use type, we can consider the importance weight of accessibility to park
services, as Table 2:
 Fig 7. Decision tree of Dependency criteria for residential land use type

Table 2. Structured pairwise comparison method; a: Ranking, b: Pairwise comparison

Various scaled Parks Ranking Various local scaled Parks Ranking

Local Park 1
Local scaled Park 1
Kid's Park 2
District scaled Park 3
Regional scaled Park 2

Local scaled Park Regional scaled Park District scaled Park

Local scaled Park 1 3 3
Regional scaled Park - 1 2
District scaled Park - - 1
1: Equal Value 2: Less Important 3: Very Important

6.6. Preparing Factor Coverage and Evaluating land use types (LUTs)

Before performing evaluation analysis, it is necessary to; first, prepare an adequate GIS layer for each criterion.
A criterion layer graphically classifies the entire study area into zones of equal value based on its capability to
support certain land use with respect to the specified criterion. GIS operations such as overlay, buffer, proximity,
as well as the standard logical operator are used to derive criterion/factor layer from the original database. The
process might involve developing several intermediate layers on the way to generate a single factor layer.

7. Conclusion

In this study, we developed an approach for evaluating different detailed urban land use types in built up
regions. This approach can be used as a basis for development of a SDSS.
 Many researches have been carried out on using GIS and SDSS for land use planning. However, most of these
studies are focused on Comprehensive Urban Planning or other higher levels of planning such as regional and
national levels [1]; [4]; [5]; [10]; [14]; [16]; [18]. In these activities, various factors such as social, economical,
demographical, environmental factors are considered. Yet, they didn’t attention to detailed urban land use
planning.
In the other hand, some researchers, that have paid attention to detailed urban land use planning, have used GIS
and SDSS to prepare plans for urban expansion and land development in unbuild up (not developed) areas around
cities. They have used GIS and SDSS to define suitable vacant lands for future development and to determine
suitable land use types for each piece of land [9]; [1]; [5]; [6]; [11]; [15]; [17]; [19]. They have considered limited
numbers of land use types and used very limited physical/spatial criteria to evaluate the suitability of land use
types for available lands. They did not pay attention to other useful concepts such as dependency, capacity and
consistency that could be assumed between different land use types. Therefore the focus of this research was to
overcome such a shortcoming.
We offered a method for evaluation of different land use types in built up urban region. This method uses GIS
and decision support system as useful supporting tools. The offered evaluation method includes using of four
concepts, which are represented by four matrices of consistency, suitability, capacity and dependency. These
matrices serve as main factors for evaluating different land use types in built up urban regions.
Each factor/matrix includes more detailed criteria extracted from many available standards and other related
documents such as different comprehension and detailed urban development plans. The suggested process was
applied on the detailed level of urban land use planning.
From the practical perspective, to develop a SDSS, much further technical improvements are required. An
expert system (ES) can be used to store the necessary knowledge and replicate the interaction process.
Furthermore, a user friendly user interface could be developed to ease the interaction between the user and the
system.

Note
* This paper is developed from the PhD work of Mr. M.Taleai and supervised by Dr. M.S. Mesgari and
Dr.A.Sharifi.

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to express deep appreciation to Mr. Hosein Pirzadeh, head of urban planning section of
Farnahad Consultant Company, for his valuable comments and for providing the needed data of the seventh
municipality region of Tehran.

8. References

[1] Abbott J., 2003, The use of GIS in informal settlement upgrading: its role and impact on the community and on local
government, Habitat International, Vol. 27(4), pp. 575-593, Governance and the Use of GIS in Developing Countries.
[2] Anderson, 1987, Seven Methods for calculating Land Capability / Suitability, Planning Advisory Service (PAS) Report
No. 402, American Planning Association, Chicago, USA.
[3] Anjomany A and Saberi A., 1992, Large Scale Land Stability Analysis Using GIS and Optimization Model as an Spatial
Decision Support System: A Multijurisdiction/Multiregion Case, In URISA Annual Conference Proceedings Vol. III,
Washington, D. C., pp. 39-48.
[4] C. Pettita, D. Pullarb and R. Stimsonb, 2002, An Integrated Multi-Scaled Decision Support Framework Used in the
Formulation and Evaluation of Land-Use Planning Scenarios for the Growth of Hervey Bay, Proceedings of the 1st
Biennial Meeting of the iEMSs, pp. 36, Available at: http://www.iemss.org/iemss2002/proceedings/vol1.html .
[5] Clarke KC and Gaydos LJ, 1998, Loose-coupling a cellular automata model and GIS: long-term urban growth prediction
for San Francisco and Washington /Baltimore, International Journal of Geographical Information Science, Vol. 12(7), pp.
699-714
[6] David G. Pitt, Doug VanValkenburg, Dan Petrik and Wes Hellevik, 2004, Socially Constructed Environmental
Assessments for Smart Growth Planning, 3rd Annual Public Participation GIS Conference, July 18-20, 2004.
[7] Densham P. J. and Goodchild M. F., 1991, Spatial Decision Support System: A Research Agenda, Proceeding of GIS/LIS'
89, ACMS, Betherda Maryland, pp. 707-716.
[8] Densham P. J., 1991, Spatial Decision Support System, Geographical Information Systems, Vol. 1, pp. 403-412.
 [9] Geertman S., 1990, GIS as a Support System for Designing and Evaluating Urban Expansion Alternatives, In URISA
Annual Conference Proceedings, Vol. III, pp. 23-47, Alberta, USA.
[10] Gharagozlou A., 2003, Presenting Urban Development Model by using Environmental Models &GIS & RS (North-West
of Tehran), Map India 2003, Poster Session.
[11] Guy Engelen, Roger White and Inge Uljee, 1997, Integrating Constrained Cellular Automata Models, GIS and Decision
Support Tools for Urban Planning and Policy Making, Chapter 8 in the book: Decision Support Systems in Urban
Planning, edited by: Harry P. J. Timmermans, Pages 125-155, E&FN Spon, London.
[12] Jankowski P. And Richard L., 1994, Integration of GIS-Based Suitability Analysis and Multi-criteria Evaluation in a
Spatial Decision Support System for Route Selection, Environment and Planning B : Planning and Design, Vol. 21, pp.
323-340.
[13] Kashani R. B., 1989, A New Method for site Suitability Analysis: The analytic Hierarchy Process, Environmental
Management, Vol. 13(6), pp. 685-693.
[14] Keith B. Matthews, Alan R. Sibbald and Susan Craw, 1999, Implementation of a spatial decision support system for rural
land use planning: integrating GIS and environmental models with search and optimization algorithms, Computers and
Electronics in Agriculture, Vol. 23, pp. 9-26.
[15] Klosterman, R. E., 1999, The What if? Collaborative planning support system, Environment and Planning B: Planning and
Design, Vol. 26, pp. 393-408.
[16] Robert A. Johnston and Tomas de la Barra, 2000, Comprehensive regional modeling for long-range planning: linking
integrated urban models and geographic information systems, Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Vol.
34(2), pp. 125-136.
[17] URL: Anthony Gar-On Yeh and Xia Li, 2002, Urban Simulation Using Neural Networks and Cellular Automata for Land
Use Planning, ISPRS Commission IV, Symposium 2002, Ottawa, Canada, July 9-12, Available at:
http://www.isprs.org/commission4/proceedings/paper.html.
[18] URL: Guillermo A. Mendoza1, 2005, A GIS-Based Multi-criteria Approaches to Land Use Suitability Assessment and
Allocation, Available at: http://www.ncrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/gtr/other/gtr-nc205/pdffiles/p31.pdf.
[19] URL: Weerakoon K.G.P.K., 2002, Integration of GIS Based Suitability Analysis and Multi Criteria Evaluation for Urban
Land Use Planning; Contribution from the Analytic Hierarchy Process, Available at:
http://www.gisdevelopment.net/aars/acrs/2002/urb/218.pdf.
[20] Whitley and Xiang, 1993, A GIS-Based method for Integrating Expert Knowledge into Land Use Suitability Analysis, In
URISA Annual Conference Proceedings, Vol. III, Atlanta, pp. 24-37.

View publication stats