Louisa J.M. Jansen, Land/natural resources consultant, Rome, Italy, Giancarlo Carrai, Managing director, SVALTEC S.r.l. , Florence, Italy, Massimiliano Petri, University of Pisa, Department of Civil Engineering, Pisa, Italy
Land-use change dynamics at cadastral parcel level in Albania - an object-oriented geo-database approach (assigned to theme
A case study in Albania is presented based upon the results of the EU Phare Land Use Policy II project where GIS-oriented instruments and innovative methodologies were implemented to support decision-making for land-use policy and planning. With the aim of improved land-use planning in future, the land-use change dynamics over the period 1991-2003 were analysed at multiple scales: from cadastral parcel to cadastral zone to communal level. The geo-database constructed uses CASE Visio and ArcInfo UML diagrams in order to organise the objects and feature classes of the Information System comprising data sets structured according to the European Environmental Agency’s INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe) project. A Land-Use Information System for Albania (LUISA) was developed that allows the logical and functional arrangement of land-uses at different levels of detail, as well as data harmonisation with other land-use description systems in use in the country. The Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) process an iterative procedure of selection, exploration and modelling of large amounts of data was used to detect a priori unknown relationships. An object-oriented approach has been followed in the developed application that puts each cadastral parcel unit of 2003 in relation to its parent cadastral parcel unit in 1991 and 1996 of which the land uses are known. The three data sets available each represent a critical moment: (i) the 1991 data represent the land uses under the former centralised government; (ii) the 1996 data represent the moment when distribution and registration of the land to the family households took place; and (iii) the 2003 data represent the actual land uses in the market-oriented economy. The developed Land-Use Change Analyses (LUCA) methodology groups identified land-use changes into different types of conversions, modifications and land not subject to change in order to underline the change processes. The results of the detailed land-use change analysis show that the preferred land-use change pattern seems to indicate that land users take rational decisions when they change land-use because of low suitability soils or unsuitable soils for that particular use in areas with steep slopes; in addition land users seem to abandon steep lands where erosion phenomena manifest themselves. In the social turmoil of rapid uncontrolled urbanisation, the first areas to be abandoned were those with low agricultural productivity in the hills. Furthermore, the areas most apt to agriculture, well served with infrastructure and close to urban centres, have in general maintained their production characteristics though at (much) lower levels. In the case of urbanisation in rural areas, green areas around the buildings have been maintained for production of fruit and vegetables for self-sufficiency purposes of the family household. These developments are the more surprising in the absence of any regulating plan.
 | Conference organized through conf-vienna
(copyright Gunther Maier) |