A Review of Rural Land Use Planning Models

Nowadays, environmental crises caused by the irrational use and land conversion, have made ecological evaluation and land use planning ever more essential. Different methods are used in land evaluation and land use planning. In this paper, land use planning models have been reviewed and techniques with different objectives, applications, and land uses have been identified. Reviewing the existing land use planning models included the analysis and evaluation of their main characteristics. Land use planning models have been studied in five groups, including expert systems, multi-criteria evaluation, mathematical programming, mixed techniques, and spatial simulation models. Each of these groups has several sub-groups and the models studied in this paper may constitute Decision Support Systems (DSSs) that are usually integrated into a GIS. The aim of this paper is to analyze and offer a structured overview towards facilitating selection of a particular and appropriate method for any land use planning application