Spatial analyzing system for urban land use management based on GIS and multi-criteria assessment modeling

Urban land management requires the integration of a wide range of data on ecological process, environmental process and process on urban planning and development. This paper combined land suitability modeling with remote sensing (RS), landscape ecological analysis and geographic information system (GIS) to develop a spatial analyzing system for urban expansion land management. The spatial analyzing system incorporates the use of a multi-criteria mechanism in GIS for the suitability evaluation of urban expansion land. Grey relational analysis (GRA) was combined with analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to address the uncertainties during the process of evaluation. This approach was applied to explicitly identify constraints and opportunities for future land conservation and development in Changsha City, China. Validation of the methodology showed a high degree of coincidence with previous independent studies as regards ecological suitability. The methodology can be useful in environmental protection, land management and regional planning.