Suitability

Suitability (aka Transition Potential, Utility, or Land Use Value) is a combination of factors that express the added value of allocating a resource to a purpose.

In the context of Land Use Modelling:

• resources are usually land units, often organised as a grid of raster-cells.
• purposes are usually land use types
• the added value is expressed as:
  1. ratio (which relates to the use of the pseudonym Transition Potential) or
  2. monetary unit of Yield per land unit or area per unit of duration, say: EUR/(m^2*year^1) or
  3. the capitalized value thereof, say: EUR/m^2.
• suitability is operationalized as a set of value maps, one for each Land Use Type.

common factors

• physical factors, such as soil type that determine the annual yield of specific production plans.
• locational factors (usually taken as positive, representing interaction value, although a more physical interpretation related to negative costs of transportation and travel would make sense too).
  • accessibility measures
  • neighbourhood enrichment or neighbourhood potential (AKA convolution).
• transition costs of destruction and reconstruction (usually represted as one time costs, which forces a modeler to think on annualisation or capitalisation)
• location specific subsidies and/or taxes
• spatial planning restrictions (sometimes taken separately in Allow maps).
• physical restrictions on transition (which are sometimes time dependent).