An integrated approach for studying the land suitability for ecological corridors through spatial multicriteria evaluations

Nature conservation is a very important issue in the sustainability assessments and spatial planning context. Knowledge of the suitability of the land to behave as an ecological corridor thus provides very significant input to land-use planning. Nature conservation and land-use planning are by their nature spatial problems. A family of methods that are rapidly gaining traction for planning and policymaking, named spatial multicriteria evaluations (SMCE), which are based on geographic information systems (GIS) and multicriteria analysis (MCA) coupling, can be an effective support for this area. The present paper proposes the integration of the GIS with a specific MCA technique, named Analytic Network Process to assess the ecological value of the land in the Piedmont Region (northern Italy). The results are obtained in the form of maps to be used as decision variables in planning. The study concludes with some lessons learned during the development of the SMCE and highlights that the applied methodology is an effective tool for decision makers in spatial planning and strategic assessments.