Land spa CES: A design module for land consolidation: Method and application

Abstract

Land fragmentation is a major problem in many rural areas and it is widely recognized that effective land administration and management is critical for sustainable rural development. Land consolidation programmes involving the reallocation of land between owners have been implemented in different parts of Europe. In this paper, we outline a land redistribution model called LandSpaCES (Land Spatial Consolidation Expert System), a module that forms the heart of an integrated planning and decision support system (IPDSS) and which utilises state-of-the-art methods and geotechnology tools to support and automate the entire process of land reallocation. LandSpaCES is the design component of LACONISS, a LAnd CONsolidation Integrated Support System for planning and decision making. It is a knowledge-based system that generates alternative land reallocations under different scenarios. Two key system concepts are utilised: 'No-Inference Engine Theory (NIET)', which differentiates LandSpaCES from the conventional expert system (ES) development, and a parcel priority index (PPI), which constitutes the basic measure that defines the redistribution of land in terms of location. The module has been applied to a case study area in Cyprus and the results from the design module compare favourably against an independent solution derived previously by the human experts. The paper reports on how the system has been used to generate alternative redistributions of land based on different scenarios.