Reallocation model for land consolidation based on landowners’ requests

Abstract

In a land consolidation project, preparation of the reallocation plan is a crucial and challenging stage with many factors playing a role. It is quite difficult to identify these factors and their contributions. The most important element in the allocation stage is the opinions of the landowners regarding the new location of their parcels. Projects are more successful when landowners' opinions are evaluated and considered. Current technological developments may facilitate the inclusion of the landowners' requests in the project. The land consolidation and reallocation phase is time-consuming and complex and forms the basis of the project. The biggest problem at that stage is block balancing. Therefore, in this study, we evaluated the performance of a reallocation model to perform block distribution by evaluating landowners' requests. The model was tested in four villages (Baharlar, Calikoy, Hirka, and Sofular) of the Denizli province, Tavas district (Turkey) where land consolidation work had been done before. Using the model, the excess distribution rates in the blocks were reduced to between 0.03% and 2.09%. In addition, the fulfillment ratio of first requests was 80-90% using the model; while, it was only 66-83% when the work was done without the model. The most powerful part of the model is to process the data within minutes compared with weeks or months for the project engineer. Thus, the model should save time and improve results for future land consolidation projects.