Classification of Approaches to Block Development in Land Consolidation Projects

Block development is one of the most important stages of the modeling and optimization of land reallotment. The effectiveness of land consolidation and the prospects of land consolidation for nature conservation and infrastructural measures, as well as supporting the managerial decision making by government and local authorities may be increased by the development of a general concept of block development. The systematization of approaches to block development in the land consolidation or land reallotment projects is the goal of the study. The technological issues of block development were addressed: the issues of block area determination, the issues of blocks boundaries, the issues of determination of the land use type, etc. The most widespread cases of block development according to the goals of land consolidation were singled out. The technical specifications of blocks were substantiated in the study. For each block development case, the multitude of possible land reallotment options and demands to the area balance were determined. An improved approach to the determination of block boundaries and land use types considering the existing zoning was presented. Approaches, developed in the study, were appraised in a land reallotment project, aimed at the development of a water conservation zone. The research findings may be used for increasing the effectiveness of land reallotment, implementation of automated reallotment systems, development of optimization models of land reallotment, and modeling based on the combination of optimizational and heuristic approach. The presented methodology could be the most effective in cases, zoning is developed, however, land consolidation is not sufficiently regulated by legislation, or land consolidation is at the initial stages.