Environmental and resource applications
damage potential, e.g. the calculation of housing capital based on field
mappings of land use and buildings for each parcel. As a result of the
larger study areas, this is normally not practicable for meso-scale studies.
They must rely on aggregated data sets, such as statistical data, e.g.
municipal and district statistics.
For Germany, Klaus & Schmidtke ( 1990) delivered a meso-scale expert
opinion (cost-benefit analysis) for coastal defence works in the “Wesermarsch-area”, Lower Saxony. This pilot study functioned as a methodological guide for a coastal defence valuation study that was conducted
in the German Federal State of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Gurwell,
pers. comm.). For reasons of comparison, the same expert opinion was
used in Schleswig-Holstein.
Being a meso-scale study, the valuation is based on aggregated data sets
(official municipal statistics). Using the GIS, the following data from
different sources were compiled and processed to create a homogeneous
database (fig. 2):
• physical geographical data:
- elevation information from a DTM,
- topographic structures from maps, scale 1:50,000 (roads, settlements
etc.);
•land-use data (Landsat-TM images);
•socio-economic data (municipal and district statistics):
- inhabitants,
- houses,
- roads infrastructure,
- motor vehicles,
- livestock,
- quality of agricultural soils,
- touristic capacity (number of beds),
- places of work and employees for 10 different sectors of economy,
- gross increment value and tax yield (running economic results).
Figure 2
Data sources and data flow
in the valuation study.
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