Multicriteria Analysis for Land-Use Management

Book excerpt: The idea of this book started at approximately 33.000 feet, somewhere above the Alps. On our way to a workshop in Venice we had the opportunity of appreciating the different types of landscapes and the complex patchwork of urban areas, agriculture, forests, rivers and lakes that can be seen from an aircraft. The complexity of this puzzle, and the complex task of managing its evolution, became the topic of conversation for the rest of the flight. It also became the topic of this book. Land-use management and multicriteria analysis offer countless opportunities for mutual reinforcement. These two fields have developed largely independently, but a trend towards the exploration of their synergies is now emerging. This is clear from the recent literature on land-use management, spatial analysis and spatial planning, which increasingly includes references to multicriteria methodologies and decision analysis. At the same time, a growing share of multicriteria applications now focus on environmental and land-use issues. This book includes contributions from authors coming from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds. All together they highlight current issues in multicriteria analysis and land-use management from theoretical, methodological and practical perspectives.