FORMALIZING A MULTI-DIMENSIONAL LAND MANAGEMENT SYSTEM: THE STAKEHOLDERS' PERSPECTIVE

Abstract. It is expected that by the year 2050, 66% of the world’s population will live in urban areas, necessitating the efficient management of land and urban space, namely the requirement for multi-dimensional land management systems (MLMS). In most countries, current LMS are two dimensional, representing the reality on a plane. This research aims at outlying guidelines designed for augmenting existing 2D LMS to multi-dimensional ones, by investigating theoretical (conceptual) and technical inferences related to the adding of the height dimension, the time dimension and the scale dimension (scale dimension may also refer to levels of details). Sustainable multi-purpose land management systems for serving various end-users is essential, therefore, our study is based on a Delphi questionnaire, which aims at understanding the perspective of diverse stakeholders and experts who may use LMS, as well as mapping their requirements and expectations from the LMS. Questions were categorized into two groups: i) theoretical, focusing on semantic and mathematical definitions; and, ii) technical, focusing on functionalities, databases, data collection, etc. As a preliminary assessment, responses of eight experts, from different fields and countries, to the questionnaire were analysed and summarized. The results are presented in this paper, including the main issues that experts pointed out, as well as suggested classes, fields, procedures and functionalities that might be required from a multi-purpose MLMS.