LandSpaCES: A Spatial Planning Tool for Land Consolidation

Land fragmentation is a significant problem in many parts of the world which hinders rational agricultural development and rural sustainable development. Land consolidation is considered to be the most effective land management approach for solving the problem of land fragmentation. It involves the re-organisation of the land tenure structure through land reallocation (or readjustment) and the provision of appropriate infrastructure. Land reallocation is accepted to be the most significant, complex and time-consuming process within land consolidation. It is split into two main sub-processes: land redistribution and land partitioning. Land reallocation is currently not adequately supported by existing information systems such as Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Therefore, LACONISS, a LAnd CONsolidation Integrated Support System for planning and decision making, is currently under development. LandSpaCES (Land Spatial Consolidation Expert System) is the central sub-system of LACONISS integrating GIS, expert systems (ES) and multi-criteria decision methods (MCDM) and can be utilized as a standalone spatial planning tool for land consolidation. It consists of two modules: the ‘Design module’ that is able to generate alternative land redistributions under different scenarios; and the ‘Evaluation module’ for assessing these alternatives. This paper outlines the basic structure and methods incorporated into each of these modules.