Building a Case-Based Decision Support System
for Land Development Control
Using Land Use Function Pattern

Xingwen Wang and Anthony G.O. Yeh

Centre of Urban Planning and Environmental Management,
The University of Hong Kong,
Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong
xwanga@hkusua.hku.hk, hdxugoy@hkucc.hku.hk



Abstract. Land development control is the process of controlling land
development to meet the needs of the society. In this paper, we attempt to
advance the use of case-based reasoning in building a case-based decision
support system for land development control. Land development control is a
complex domain. We first discuss how to deal with the data and knowledge
involved in land development control in order to represent the knowledge and
define the case in the system. We then propose to use land use function pattern,
which is built on geospatial relations and land use functions of the proposed
development site with its surrounding environment, to simplify case input,
representation and retrieval of the system. Different land use types have
different land use function patterns. Land use function pattern can be extracted
from the domain knowledge derived from town planning legislation,
regulations, and guidelines. Our work mainly aims to support the work of
planning officers in seeking similar precedent cases in preparing
recommendations to the Town Planning Board. From the preliminary results of
the experimental system, we find that cases can be more easily input and
represented and similar case(s) can be more efficiently and effectively retrieved
using land use function pattern.
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