Supporting Land Acquisition Decision-Making using GIScience

Keywords: Spatial optimization, land aquisition problem, contiguity, performance
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

Land acquisition is central to urban growth and development, wildfire mitigation, natural reserve design to protect endangered species, and other planning contexts. Underlying these types of decision-making processes is the need to select a subset of discrete spatial units to optimize benefit, preference, cost, etc. The main characteristic of the chosen set is that it must be spatially contiguous while maintaining a specific size or area. The literature has proposed different approaches to mathematically formulating this fundamental problem to impose contiguity. Subsequent work has highlighted differences among formulations in terms of computational performance. However, questions remain about how and when different approaches may be appropriate. This paper explores computational performance and spatial context in addressing land acquisition.