The application of multicriteria analysis and GIS. A case study of recreational zoning in the southern Aso National Park, Japan

Abstract

Zoning strategy has been widely used for planning and decision making in land uses for more than a decade. However, most of the zoning plan that existed until today and still in used for development control purposes has been prepared before the era of the applications of GIS and multicriteria analysis technique. Therefore, this conventional zoning plan is less effective and inefficient to assist and guide contemporary types of development. The quality and effectiveness of zoning plan can be substantially improved if updated systems and modeling techniques are appropriately used. The aim of this paper is to show how the application of GIS and multicriteria analysis can upgrade the efficiency of the existing zoning plan in the southern Aso National Park with particular reference to a case of recreation zoning. The establishings of criteria for recreation, data requirements, the application of multicriteria modeling with particular reference to the AHP technique and GIS overlay processing are discussed in this paper. The final section of this paper illustrated maps result showing recreation suitability areas for preservation, conservation and facilityls values.