Intermediate Suitability Analysis

This lesson revisits two basic issues in spatial analysis – overlaying different thematic layers and allocating space to different land use classes. At the intermediate level, these problems are treated in more depth.
First, the lesson addresses the fact that our way of modeling spatial entities such as a forest using a crisp, i.e. sharp bounded, polygon very often does not fit with reality. In the real physical environment, it is often very hard to say where exactly the line limiting a forest is. To capture such uncertainties, the concept of fuzzy boundaries is used in GIS.
Identifying land that meets a set of criteria for a certain land use is already quite tricky. In some cases a GIS analyst may even face the problem of two conflicting demands for the same area. It is quite clear that the same alpine meadow can hardly be a sheep-run and a wolf habitat at the same time...or can it? The multi-objective land use allocation technique introduced in the second unit proposed a solution to problems like this.