Assessing Discrepancies between Official Economic Statistics and Land Use through a Field Inventory System

Abstract: To limit additional (net) land take for economic activities, the reality of space use needs tobe properly understood. This was assessed by comparing the spatial patterns obtained from a fieldinventory with those from existing data for five case areas in Flanders (Belgium). Each case area isa transect from a high-density urban area to a suburban neighborhood or even a semi-rural zone.The statistics on these areas, based on official data, mostly derived from tax returns, social securitycontributions, and on commercial retail data, were checked with field observations. The locationof economic activities and the patterns of space use vary in different settlement environments,resulting in the identification of typical characteristics for eight location environment types. While in,for example, core shopping centers a strong convergence can be noticed between existing statisticsand the field inventory (71% of companies and 93% of parcels are detected on the field), in residentialareas (21% of companies and 17% of parcels are detected on the field) the convergence is verylimited. In other words, in some environments, (the combination of) data and statistics give a goodunderstanding of the space use while, in other environments, gaps with realities in the field areobvious. Therefore, a field inventory system can enrich the picture and present another reality tocomplement both existing statistics and other land-use data methods such as remote sensing andweb data extraction.

Jaar van publicatie:2018

Toegankelijkheid:Open