Application of GIS in land-use planning: a case study in the Coastal Mekong Delta of Vietnam

This paper presents the applications of Geographic Information System (GIS) in three different Land Use Planning (LUP) approaches: The participatory LUP (PLUP) which strongly considers the local people perceptions for land utilizations, the guidelines for LUP by FAO enhanced with multi-criteria evaluation (FAO-MCE), and the LUP and analysis system (LUPAS) using interactive multiple-goal linear programming. GIS plays an important role in the application of these approaches. In PLUP, GIS help to integrate the acquired spatial and attribute data from farmer discussions, and to analyzes the changes not only in biophysical, land cover but also in farmers' perception on land utilizations. In FAO-MCE, GIS was used to combine biophysical and socio-economic characteristics and to perform multi-criteria evaluation. In LUPAS, an optimization model was developed. The model is linked with a GIS for data input and results presentation. The land use planners can use the model to explore different land use scenarios with different objectives and constraints, both biophysically and socio-economically