Allocation

Land Use Allocation is the process of the assignment of land resources to various usage purposes. The allocation is Discrete when each unit of land is allocated to only one out of a limited set of Land Use Types. The allocation is Continuous when each unit of land can have any non-negative amount of land use for each type up to a fixed total.

If the intensity of land use is spatially variant and/or different land use types don't exclude each other (Multi Functional Land Use) and/or land functions are (partially) abandoned, one needs Quantitative Allocation.

Both allocations require a Suitability for each allocation alternative (thus, for each Land Use Type there is a  map that assigns a Suitability to each Land Unit).

Furthermore, one can define restrictions per land use type on the total amount of allocated land.

When facing many Land Use Types, allocation can also be Nested if a type hierarchy makes sense. Sub-typing can also be done as a post processing step. If the occurrence is also constrained per sub-type, one needs another round of allocation within the space allocated to the main-type. Sub typing can more often be done as unconstrained classification.

If there are only two land use types, only the difference between the two suitability maps matters, and one can use the nth_element or rth_element function for the allocation (or use the weighted variants to implement quantitative allocation).