"pimp your landscape" - An interactive land-use planning support tool

Abstract

In the context of the INTERREG IIIA project IT-Reg-EU (http://boku.forst. tu-dresden.de/ITRegEU/index.html) the tool Pimp your landscape (P.Y.L) was developed for solving land-use management conflicts in the Euro-Region Neisse. P.Y.L is a web-based tool with focus on visualizing and evaluating changes in the land-use pattern. Information on the land-use pattern is based on CORINE LAND COVER 2000. The maps are divided in sections of 10 x 10 km size. Each pixel in the maps represents the dominating land-use type of the 100100 m area. By clicking a pixel a new land-use type is assigned. The impact of each land-use type on different landscape functions is ranked on a relative scale from 0 (worst) to 100 (best). The ranking is based on indicator sets and expert knowledge. The user can choose between two modi: the Expert mode enables to include regional expert knowledge into the evaluation and to define a rule set, representing planning restrictions. The Game mode allows regional citizens to appraise the effects of planning measures. Application areas are participatory planning, management planning conflict solution and education. Tests with different user groups showed that i) further landscape functions, ii) refined evaluation of the land-use form impacts, and iii) neighbourhood relationships between different land-use forms should be integrated.