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Egypt has been facing substantial unplanned human settlement growth on agricultural land since the 1950s. Although plans to better manage future settlement growth are ongoing, a full understanding of unplanned settlement growth on agricultural land remains lacking. This study investigated why and how unplanned human settlement growth occurs in Assiut Governorate, the Nile Valley. A mixed-method approach combining the institutional resource regime framework, template analysis, and process tracing was used to gain insights into those mechanisms that generate unplanned growth. Analyzing the institutional land regime between 1805 and 2020 revealed that various public policies have existed alongside of land use and property rights, but the overall regime remains incoherent. In-depth interviews with stakeholders in Assiut Governorate highlighted that the informality in Assiut was driven by institutional and political, cultural, and economic forces (a total of 26 forces). Process tracing showed that the key mechanism behind unplanned settlement growth has existed since the 1950s and is triggered by a combination of incoherent public policy, land use and property rights. These results suggest that the current national development plan (2052 Vision) will most probably lead to similar setbacks if the land regime's complexity and incoherence are not addressed. They also revealed that several informal institutions and local values and customs could also be significant obstacles to effective regulation of the development of agricultural land in the Nile Valley and Delta Region.

There is an urgent need to develop strategic spatial planning methods adapted to the conditions of countries with weak planning systems facing rapid urbanization. These methods should allow evaluating the territorial qualities of the system of cities and to meaningfully guiding the implementation of national urban policies or strategies. In this context, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UNHabitat) has developed the Spatial Development Framework (SDF) method, which is presented here for the first time, after having been tested in different countries. The SDF method helps to develop an understanding of the roles and inter-linkages of various urban settlements in the territory and to frame the territorial structure in a context of fluidity and uncertainty typical of countries facing uncontrolled urbanization. The method is then discussed and conclusions for the way forward are drawn.

Rwanda has developed a National Urbanization Policy (NUP) that identifies six secondary citieswhere efforts to promote urbanization and economic growth should focus. To implement it, a Spatial Development Framework (SDF) was developed, that makes use of Planning Support Systems (PSS) to communicate the goals to the local level. PSS present opportunities for stakeholders to understand and translate national policies to their local planning contexts. This paper questions how the SDF’s PSS tools can be used in the NUP’s transfer and translation to the local level. It focuses on potential users of the SDF. Results suggest that SDF’s PSS tools and outcomes can promote better spatial understanding, and communicate planning needs, strengthening regional competition andeconomic development among the secondary cities and in line with NUP. We conclude that the national government can use vertical transfer and horizontal translation to transfer the SDF’S PSS tools and outcomes to secondary cities.

Since 2005, Egypt has a new land-use development policy to control unplanned human settlement growth and prevent outlying growth. This study assesses the impact of this policy shift on settlement growth in Assiut Governorate, Egypt, between 1999 and 2020. With symbolic machine learning, we extract built-up areas from Landsat images of 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2020 and a Landscape Expansion Index with a new QGIS plugin tool (Growth Classifier) developed to classify settlement growth types. The base year, 1999, was produced by the national remote sensing agency. After extracting the built-up areas from the Landsat images, eight settlement growth types (infill, expansion, edge-ribbon, linear branch, isolated cluster, proximate cluster, isolated scattered, and proximate scattered) were identified for four periods (1999:2005, 2005:2010, 2010:2015, and 2015:2020). The results show that prior to the policy shift of 2005, the growth rate for 1999–2005 was 11% p.a. In all subsequent periods, the growth rate exceeded the target rate of 1% p.a., though by varying amounts. The observed settlement growth rates were 5% (2005:2010), 7.4% (2010:2015), and 5.3% (2015:2020). Although the settlements in Assiut grew primarily through expansion and infill, with the latter growing in importance during the last two later periods, outlying growth is also evident. Using four class metrics (number of patches, patch density, mean patch area, and largest patch index) for the eight growth types, all types showed a fluctuated trend between all periods, except for expansion, which always tends to increase. To date, the policy to control human settlement expansion and outlying growth has been unsuccessful.

The use of check-dams in mountain environments to regulate fluxes of water and sediments is widely applied across Mediterranean mountains. Besides the use of “grey infrastructures” such as check-dams, other restoration and hydrological control measures rely more on the use of “green infrastructures” or “nature-based solutions” (e.g. reforestation, buffer lines) or a combination of both types of measures. It is widely accepted that both are complementary, and that prioritization should be based on economic, ecological and cultural criteria. This paper brings together all the knowledge generated during more than one decade concerning the impact of land use changes, reforestation, and hydrological control works on several ecosystem services in a representative Mediterranean catchment. The work evaluates different management scenarios aiming to optimize provision of ecosystem services in the area. The study area is a medium-sized catchment (∼300 km2) in Southeast Spain, representative of Mediterranean mountains that experienced agricultural land abandonment, greening up, and restoration works in the second half of the twentieth century. The methods combined: (i) previous research results for the area that were organized in an ecosystem services framework, providing data for three representative scenarios of catchment management; (ii) the use of value content analysis of the existing management plans for the area to understand the view of the managers; and (iii) a multicriteria analysis of the management scenarios to determine the most sustainable scenario to optimize different ecosystem services. The results of the evaluation were later validated with the stakeholders (technicians and managers involved in the management plans) through interviews. Our results show that solutions that respect landscape and ecological dynamics are more sustainable and cheaper in the medium and long term than scenarios based on “grey infrastructures”, although the latter could have more desirable short-term impacts. The value analysis reflects how there are some concepts, such as ecosystem services, that could easily be further incorporated into several management plans. When choosing a management scenario, this needs to be adapted to the local environmental conditions and to the specific objectives of the restoration works. Tailor-made management scenarios taking into account two factors (local conditions and specific management objectives) can optimize resources and achieve medium to long-term sustainability.

An essential component of every land administration system are the land records. These records contain information about ownership, value and use of land. Conflict and post-conflict contexts, both in literature and in practice, have shown that land administration systems are mostly affected by the loss of land records and staff. Post-conflict contexts are characterized with: institutional weaknesses, economic and social problems and serious security problems. Based on a case study conducted in Rwanda, firstly the type, the format and the status of land records are discovered, and then those are related with the process of post-conflict state building. This relation is explored in depth in order to determine and describe the role of land records in support of post-conflict state building. Here specific attention is paid to the role that land records have in land dispute resolution in such contexts. Findings from this paper shows that a strong relation exists and that land records play a positive role in support of the post-conflict state building.

This study focuses on future forest cover change in Buzau Subcarpathians, a landslide prone region in Romania. Past and current trends suggest that the area might expect a future increase in deforestation. We developed spatially explicit scenarios until 2040 to analyze the spatial pattern of future forest cover change and potential changes to landslide risk. First, we generated transition probability maps using the weights of evidence method, followed by a cellular automata allocation model. We performed expert interviews, to develop two future forest management scenarios. The Alternative scenario (ALT) was defined by 67 % more deforestation than the Business as Usual scenario (BAU). We integrated the simulated scenarios with a landslide susceptibility map. In both scenarios, most of deforestation was projected in areas where landslides are less likely to occur. Still, 483 (ALT) and 276 (BAU) ha of deforestation were projected on areas with a high-landslide occurrence likelihood. Thus, deforestation could lead to a local-scale increase in landslide risk, in particular near or adjacent to forestry roads. The parallel process of near 10 % forest expansion until 2040 was projected to occur mostly on areas with high-landslide susceptibility. On a regional scale, forest expansion could so result in improved slope stability. We modeled two additional scenarios with an implemented landslide risk policy, excluding high-risk zones. The reduction of deforestation on high-risk areas was achieved without a drastic decrease in the accessibility of the areas. Together with forest expansion, it could therefore be used as a risk reduction strategy.

National Urbanization Policies (NUPs) are of particular importance in countries with rapid urbanization. Both for diagnosis for development of NUPs and for planning of implementation of NUPs we present a new methodology called the Spatial Development Framework (SDF). The SDF analyzes and describes with stakeholders the regional structure and interdependencies between settlements and evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of settlements. This is the basis for action planning by national, regional and local stakeholders. We describe the methodology and show the preliminary results of the ongoing implementation of the methodology for the NUP implementation in Rwanda. We discuss the empirical value of the methodology, its integrative nature, the applicability to any spatial policy development and implementation, its data requirements, and its time input requirements. We conclude that the Spatial Development Framework methodology complements NUPs be providing an empirical, integrated and by stakeholders shared understanding of the spatial structure of the country’s settlements and development corridors. It serves realistic urban and regional development planning based on this shared understanding. Keywords —matrix of functions, national urban policy, spatial multi-criteria evaluation, urban and regional planning.

Uncertainty in forest planning is a prevailing problem affecting decision-making processes, especially those relating to climate change adaptation. Limited knowledge about uncertainty has prompted this empirical investigation of forest planners' understanding of uncertainty related to its recognition, its management and risk perception. We used a comprehensive uncertainty framework to address and test these uncertainties, with data from an online survey, to identify the views of 33 forest planners through Britain. Responses were analysed using non-parametric tests. The results showed that planners have significantly different views on uncertainty among economic, social and climatic categories. Uncertainty in the climatic category was more acutely perceived than in the economic and social categories. Planners preferred to practice active uncertainty management, as the results suggest they feel more able to manage uncertainty in forest models and their outcomes. Forest planners also indicated diverse perceptions of salient risks of change over the next 30 years. The results show they may take action only to pests, drought and wind risks posing a threat to forests even though they perceived these risks potentially to be highly regulated and controlled by forestry policies. The findings provide a better understanding of uncertainty as a source of inertia to climate change adaptation in forestry, identify new research objectives and support the development of forestry policies for climate change adaptation.

In order to share information on the development and use of forest management decision support systems (FMDSS), a European-initiated network has established a wiki website as part of its activities. Case studies and associated lessons learned were solicited from the network using semantic structures built on the wiki. A total of 31 cases from 10 different countries and 80 associated lessons were entered into the wiki. The resulting lessons were categorized (non-exclusively) using four major themes: (1) decision support system architecture and design (40 lessons), (2) methods and models (26), (3) knowledge management processes (34) and (4) participatory processes (32). The semantic wiki proved useful for gathering case information and relating it to other information objects, such as FMDSS software descriptions; however, it was not as well suited to the task of analysis and synthesis as commercial qualitative analysis software packages. Future development possibilities for the semantic structures are suggested, and more cases are solicited from the FMDSS community.

Ontology-based information publishing, retrieval, reuse, and integration have become popular research topics to address the challenges involved in exchanging data between heterogeneous sources. However, in most cases ontologies are still developed in a centralized top-down manner by a few knowledge engineers. Consequently, the role that developers play in conceptualizing a domain such as the geosciences is disproportional compared with the role of domain experts and especially potential end-users. These and other drawbacks have stimulated the creation of new methodologies focusing around collaboration. Based on a review of existing approaches, this article presents a two-step methodology and implementation to foster collaborative ontology engineering in the geosciences. Our approach consists of the development of a minimalistic core ontology acting as a catalyst and the creation of a virtual collaborative development cycle. Both methodology and prototypical implementation have been tested in the context of the EU-funded ForeStClim project which addresses environmental protection with respect to forests and climate change.

Using county-level employment data, we analyse how the spatial concentration of jobs has changed in China's Pearl River Delta (PRD) between 1990 and 2005. Despite unique Chinese policies that exhibit strong influence on the economic landscape, we detect key parallels with the patterns found in classic theories and empirical studies in Western contexts. Total employment has become increasingly concentrated. This aggregate picture hides important sectoral variations though: manufacturing employment has spread out to suburban areas; producer service jobs have increasingly concentrated in metropolitan centres; and consumer and public services have clustered in areas with high aggregate population. We argue that the major forces that are shaping the economic landscape in PRD are the market institutions and development path-dependency. Under the circumstances of an increasingly liberalised market and decentralised government, policy now may function as a dynamic tool to magnify local spatial-economic and historical advantages and to balance uneven regional development.

The study presents an approach that combined objective information such as sampling or experimental data with subjective information such as expert opinions. This combined approach was based on the Analytic Network Process method. It was applied to evaluate soil erosion risk and overcomes one of the drawbacks of USLE/RUSLE soil erosion models, namely that they do not consider interactions among soil erosion factors. Another advantage of this method is that it can be used if there are insufficient experimental data. The lack of experimental data can be compensated for through the use of expert evaluations. As an example of the proposed approach, the risk of soil erosion was evaluated in olive groves in Southern Spain, showing the potential of the ANP method for modelling a complex physical process like soil erosion.

Serious conflicts tend to lead to both significant displacements of people and competing claims over land. Forced displacement, due to the involvement of arms, disrupts the relation that people have with their land, leaving them with no other choice than to leave their land behind for their own safety. However, the temporary disruption has long-lasting or even permanent effects in land tenure or even in the formal land administration as a whole. The vacated land is occupied by secondary and successive occupants, sometimes with the consent and under the direction of authorities. After the conflict, when original tenants return a conflict of interests emerges because of overlapping interests and conflicting claims, which may each be regarded as legitimate under successive administrations. On top of that, returning refugees—people who flee their homes for their safety and cross the border of their country—often find their original properties destroyed, leaving them with little proof or evidence to justify their claims.

Use of decision support systems (DSS) has thus far been framed as a social process of adoption or technical process of usability. We analyze the development of a DSS as a process of institutionalization of new as well as drift of existing practices. We write an Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) account, i.e. an interpretive study, that follows the traces left by both human and non-human actors (e.g. technology, methodologies, etc.) to understand how a DSS development project institutionalizes DSS technology in several forest management organizations in the German state of Rheinland Pfalz. The research has an innovative value since it uses ANT in the design of a DSS, hence affecting it, while commonly ANT has been used to understand why networks work or do not. Moreover, we use a new technology (PREZITM, www.prezi.com) for the visualization of the whole actor network coherent to the ANT methodology, i.e. “keeping the social flat.” As a result, the development of the ANT account proposed in the present paper, even if still partial, supports the design of new technologies being introduced in current practice and generates an important learning effect thanks to the underpinning interpretative approach

Spatial data availability on internet or intranet rapidly increases. Laymen use this data through applications such as Google Maps, Google Earth and Virtual Earth. Relatively new standards allow interoperable use for publication, sharing and calculation of spatial data. We discuss the opportunities that new spatial and multi-criteria decision analysis web service technologies and standards offer in combination with technology to distribute computing and analysis. We report of the architecture and the first prototype of the open source Distributed Spatial Multi-Criteria Evaluation (D-SMCE) web application. It is extensible by using OSGi technology for modularity and different web-services from spatial domains, such as OGC web mapping, web feature and web processing services, and non-spatial domains, such as Decision Deck. Distributed SMCE is a framework and an application. The theoretical context shows how spatial planning and decision support systems can be understood to evolve, to relate practice of distributed evaluation with standards of D-SMCE.

The inherent uncertainty of climate change impacts is one of the main challenges for adaptation in environmental management. The lack of knowledge about climate impacts on ecosystem services at high spatial and temporal resolution limits when and what adaptation measures should be taken. We addressed these limits by assessing four ecosystem services—forest production, tree growth, sequestered carbon, and tourism potential—under drought or climate change. To support adaptation, we adapted the existing concept of 'dynamic adaptive policy pathways' for forest management by developing an action expiration chart, which helps to define expiry dates for forestry actions using ecosystem services delivery thresholds. We assessed services for Sitka spruce, Scots pine, and pedunculate oak on the National Forest Estate in Scotland for the next 80 years using probabilistic climate change data from the UKCP09 weather generator. Findings showed that drought would have an overall long-term negative impact on the provision of three services with a decrease up to 41%, whereas climate change has a positive impact on tourism potential with up to five times higher frequency of good climate conditions during summer months. Furthermore, the results highlighted when forestry actions, mainly in the lowlands, will reach their environmental limits during the next 80 years. Our findings reduce knowledge uncertainty and highlight when and where adaptation should be implemented to ensure the provision of future forest ecosystem services in Scotland.

Processing – Multi Criteria Evaluation (AHP-MCE) are discussed. Most of these methods are data driven methods and can be used to elicit the transition potential rules in the urban CA models. In the following, three possible rule elicitation methods: Interview, Document analysis, and Card sorting are explained and demonstrated. These three methods are driven by knowledge and can be used to elicit conflict resolution rules as well as transition potential

Information helps decision makers to address and to decide about environmental problems. In the context of climate change adaptation, often knowledge is missing on how the available information from impact models affects the decision-making process. The main aim of this study was to explore the extent of ambiguity and how new climate change information influenced decision of forest planners. We investigated changes in decisions of planners about forestry actions representing species choice and forest tourism and expiry dates of these actions leading to environmental constraints in the provision of ecosystem services. Forest planners evaluated expiry dates using four forest ecosystem services: forest production, stand yield class, sequestered carbon, and potential tourism. Data were collected during workshops with eleven forest planners from three forest districts in Scotland. Presented climate change information modified the understanding and frames of planners about forestry actions assessed with accompanying expiry dates. Changes in the frames of planners often result in both earlier and later expiry dates. Ambiguity of planners was found to be dependent on diversity in frames and difficulty in evaluating multiple ecosystem services. These findings imply that due to ambiguity forest planners might find it hard to choose climate change adaptation measures and researchers can struggle to convince planners with new research findings.

Probabilistic climate data have become available for the first time through the UK Climate Projections 2009, so that the risk of change in tree growth can be quantified. We assessed the drought risk spatially and temporally using drought probabilities calculated from the weather generator data and tree species vulnerabilities using Ecological Site Classification model across Britain. We evaluated the drought impact on the potential yield class of three major tree species (Picea sitchensis, Pinus sylvestris, and Quercus robur), which cover around 59 % (400,700 ha) of state-managed forests, across the lowlands and uplands. We show that drought impacts result mostly in reduced tree growth over the next 80 years when using B1, A1B, and A1FI IPCC emissions scenarios, but varied spatially. We found a maximum reduction of 94 % but also a maximum increase of 56 % in potential stand yield class in the 2080s from the baseline climate (1961–1990). Furthermore, potential production over the state-managed forests for all three species in the 2080s is estimated to decrease due to drought by 42 % in the lowlands and by 32 % in the uplands in comparison to the baseline climate. Our results reveal that potential tree growth and forest production on the state-managed forests in Britain is likely to reduce, and indicate where and when adaptation measures are required. Moreover, this paper demonstrates the value of probabilistic climate projections for an important economic and environmental sector.

De omstreden grenzen in het Israëlisch-Palestijnse conflict bepalen mede de toegang tot water. De verdeling van het schaarse water in het gebied is al sinds begin vorige eeuw een sleutelprobleem in de ongelijkheid tussen Israëli’s en Palestijnen. Maar die situatie kan geleidelijk veranderen, mede door technologisch-economische ontwikkelingen

Water resources conflicts are often implicit due to distance between stakeholders and the distributed nature of decision making. Physical distance and time separate downstream effects from upstream human activity. In addition, farmers and other interest groups manage upstream lands with different strategies. System state requirements of complex water systems, driven by purposeful activity, are difficult to define in advance and variable over time. Stakeholders constantly learn to adopt to a changing environment. Soft systems analysis, emphasizing learning inhuman related systems, provided a framework to analyze stakeholders and define design criteria for a group decision support system for land use optimization.

What are the areas in a catchment where soil conservation practices can be most effectively implemented? To be able to answer that question, erosion rates and farm profitability from different land uses need to be optimized according to physical economic and social constraints, which differ for the interest groups in and outside a catchment. The Interdisciplinary Tool for Optimizing Productivity and Erosion (ITOPE), a conceptual model at this point, offers the opportunity for hydrologists, economists and anthropologists to integrate their knowledge about the erosion problem. It optimizes farm profitability and soil loss and quantifies the economic impact of soil conservation measures for subcatchments, given physical, social and economic constraints, by linking a hydrologic model, a multiple criteria optimization model and an expert system. It should serve as a tool for regional planners, which ensures that social and economic boundary conditions for each of the interest groups in a watershed are considered. It should also serve as a negotiation tool for groups inside and outside the watershed, to allocate the costs and benefits of soil conservation. The development of the conceptual model has led to the observation of interdisciplinary methodological opportunities.

In the framework of the UNESCO sponsored project on “Capacity Building for Natural Disaster Reduction‿ a case study was carried out on multi-hazard risk assessment of the city of Turrialba, located in the central part of Costa Rica. The city with a population of 33,000 people is located in an area, which is regularly affected by flooding, landslides and earthquakes. In order to assist the local emergency commission and the municipality, a pilot study was carried out in the development of a GIS –based system for risk assessment and management. The work was made using an orthophoto as basis, on which all buildings, land parcels and roads, within the city and its direct surroundings were digitized, resulting in a digital parcel map, for which a number of hazard and vulnerability attributes were collected in the field. Based on historical information a GIS database was generated, which was used to generate flood depth maps for different return periods. For determining the seismic hazard a modified version of the Radius approach was used and the landslide hazard was determined based on the historical landslide inventory and a number of factor maps, using a statistical approach. The cadastral database of the city was used, in combination with the various hazard maps for different return periods to generate vulnerability maps for the city. In order to determine cost of the elements at risk, differentiation was made between the costs of the constructions and the costs of the contents of the buildings. The cost maps were combined with the vulnerability maps and the hazard maps per hazard type for the different return periods, in order to obtain graphs of probability versus potential damage. The resulting database can be a tool for local authorities to determine the effect of certain mitigation measures, for which a cost-benefit analysis can be carried out. The database also serves as an important tool in the disaster preparedness phase of disaster management at the municipal level.