Desktop GIS applications, such as ArcGIS and QGIS, provide tools essential for conducting suitability analysis, an activity that is central in formulating a land-use plan. But, when it comes to building complicated land-use suitability models, these applications have several limitations, including operating system-dependence, lack of dedicated modules, insufficient reproducibility, and difficult, if not impossible, deployment on a computing cluster. To address the challenges, this paper introduces PyLUSAT: Python for Land Use Suitability Analysis Tools. PyLUSAT is an open-source software package that provides a series of tools (functions) to conduct various tasks in a suitability modeling workflow. These tools were evaluated against comparable tools in ArcMap 10.4 with respect to both accuracy and computational efficiency. Results showed that PyLUSAT functions were two to ten times more efficient depending on the job's complexity, while generating outputs with similar accuracy compared to the ArcMap tools. PyLUSAT also features extensibility and cross-platform compatibility. It has been used to develop fourteen QGIS Processing Algorithms and implemented on a high-performance computational cluster (HiPerGator at the University of Florida) to expedite the process of suitability analysis. All these properties make PyLUSAT a competitive alternative solution for urban planners/researchers to customize and automate suitability analysis as well as integrate the technique into a larger analytical framework.
翻译:ARCGIS 和 QGIS 等桌面地理信息系统应用程序为进行适合性分析提供了必不可少的工具,而适应性分析是制定土地使用计划的核心。但是,在建立复杂的土地使用适合性模型时,这些应用程序有几个局限性,包括操作系统依赖性、缺乏专用模块、复制能力不足、难以(甚至不可能)在计算组中部署。为了应对这些挑战,本文件介绍了PyLUSAT:土地使用兼容性分析工具Python。PyLUSAT是一个开放源软件包,提供一系列工具(功能),用于在适合性模型流程中执行各种任务。这些工具在准确性和计算效率方面都以ArcMap 10.4中的可比工具进行评估。结果显示,PyLUSAT的功能比工作复杂程度高2至10倍,同时产生与ArcMap工具相似的准确性产出。PyLUSAT还具有可扩展性和交叉平台兼容性。它被用来开发14种替代的QGIS处理Algoithms工具,并用于在高性GPL的升级性成本模型分析框架中进行高性分析。