A multi-participant spatial decision support system for planning tourism-related land use change in small island states

Strategic land use issues are typically complex and non-routine decision problems that require consideration of several, and often conflicting, viewpoints, objectives and possible solution strategies. Although GIS can provide important capabilities for manipulating and displaying spatial data, they lack the capabilities required to assist multiple decision makers to craft consensual land development strategies. interest has grown in recent years in addressing this shortcoming by coupling GIS with the subjective evaluation and multi-participant capabilities of multi-criteria analysis (MCA) techniques.;This thesis presents a methodology based on integrating selected GIS and MCA functionality within a Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS) that is designed for land use and tourism planning in small island states (SIS). Tourism has become an increasingly important economic activity in many tropical SIS that, in the absence of careful and widely-considered planning, can contribute to uncoordinated and conflict-laden patterns of land use and resource utilisation. Based on a conceptualisation. of the linkages between land use planning and tourism planning in SIS, a multi-participant SDSS IS developed for the task of identifying potential locations for tourist accommodation and evaluating the suitability of these sites according to differentially weighted evaluation criteria. A small sample of participants with diverse interests in land use and tourism planning issues apply this tool to a specific case study in West Bay District of Grand Cayman, British West Indies. The results of the case study and post hoc extensions of this research are presented with particular attention given to the degree of consensus in the participants' site rankings and the robustness of the results relative to changes in criteria weights and MCA method. Several suggestions for future research are offered based on the case study findings.