Participatory land use modelling, pathways to an integrated approach

The increasing adoption of land use models in planning and policy development highlights the need for an integrated approach that combines analytical modelling techniques with discursive ‘soft-science’ methodologies. Recent scientific contributions to the discipline have tended to focus on analytical problems such as statistical assessment of model goodness of fit through map comparison techniques, while the problem of integrating stakeholder information into land use models has received little attention. Using the example of a land use model developed for the Guadiamar basin in South West Spain, location of the emblematic Doñana natural area, an integrated methodology for participatory calibration and evaluation of model results is presented which combines information from key stakeholders across a range of sectors with analytical model calibration techniques. Both discursive and analytical techniques are presented side by side to demonstrate that including participatory approaches is likely to improve both calibration results and model applicability. Integration of participatory methods into land use models is more likely to be successful if stakeholders are selected carefully so as to make best possible use of their time and knowledge, and are involved in the modelling process from the beginning of the project cycle.