Evaluating Multi-Objective Land Use Planning Tools Using Soft Systems Methods

This paper presents a soft systems evaluation of two multi-objective genetic algorithms (mGAs) applied to land use planning. These mGAs search for a set of alternative solutions de ning the structure of the relationship between two or more objectives. To investigate the usefulness of the mGAs for decision support the sets of solutions found by the mGAs are compared with allocations made by professional land managers, with a range of backgrounds, for a real world application. Conclusions are drawn on the di erences between the solutions found by the land managers and the mGAs, in particular the constraints that limit the range of plans considered acceptable.