Multicriteria Analysis for Land-Use Management

The proper planning, design and management of land use demands a careful balancing of many goals, and the search for desirable land uses, coupled with effective and sustainable management practices, is made more complex by the interactions between the environment, the economy and society. One of the main reasons underlying the growing interest in multicriteria analysis for land use management is the need for an integrated approach to such complex problems. Multicriteria analysis can support the structuring of land use problems, allowing the concerns of major actors to be explored, giving trade-offs between conflicting goals, and leading to the evaluation of options from different perspectives. The integration of spatial concepts into multicriteria schemes means that this type of methodology can now make a substantial contribution to land-use management. The 19 contributions to this text illustrate the state-of-the-art in the field, highlighting current theoretical, methodological and practical issues. The book should be of use to a broad readership of scientists, land-use managers and decision makers.