The downloadable ZIP file contains model documentation and contact information for the model creator.  For more information, or a copy of the project report which provides greater model detail, please contact Ryan Urie - traigo12@gmail.com.This model was created from February through April 2010 as a central component of the developer's master's project in Bioregional Planning and Community Design at the University of Idaho to provide a tool for identifying appropriate locations for various land uses based on a variety of user-defined social, economic, ecological, and other criteria. It was developed using the Land-Use Conflict Identification Strategy developed by Carr and Zwick (2007). The purpose of this model is to allow users to identify suitable locations within a user-defined extent for any land use based on any number of social, economic, ecological, or other criteria the user chooses. The model as it is currently composed was designed to identify highly suitable locations for new residential, commercial, and industrial development in Kootenai County, Idaho using criteria, evaluations, and weightings chosen by the model's developer. After criteria were chosen, one or more data layers were gathered for each criterion from public sources. These layers were processed to result in a 60m-resolution raster showing the suitability of each criterion across the county. These criteria were ultimately combined with a weighting sum to result in an overall development suitability raster. The model is intended to serve only as an example of how a GIS-based land-use suitability analysis can be conceptualized and implemented using ArcGIS ModelBuilder, and under no circumstances should the model's outputs be applied to real-world decisions or activities. The model was designed to be extremely flexible so that later users may determine their own land-use suitability, suitability criteria, evaluation rationale, and criteria weights. As this was the first project of its kind completed by the model developer, no guarantees are made as to the quality of the model or the absence of errorsThis model has a hierarchical structure in which some forty individual land-use suitability criteria are combined by weighted summation into several land-use goals which are again combined by weighted summation to yield a final land-use suitability layer. As such, any inconsistencies or errors anywhere in the model tend to reveal themselves in the final output and the model is in a sense self-testing. For example, each individual criterion is presented as a raster with values from 1-9 in a defined spatial extent. Inconsistencies at any point in the model will reveal themselves in the final output in the form of an extent different from that desired, missing values, or values outside the 1-9 range.This model was created using the ArcGIS ModelBuilder function of ArcGIS 9.3. It was based heavily on the recommendations found in the text "Smart land-use analysis: the LUCIS model." The goal of the model is to determine the suitability of a chosen land-use at each point across a chosen area using the raster data format. In this case, the suitability for Development was evaluated across the area of Kootenai County, Idaho, though this is primarily for illustrative purposes. The basic process captured by the model is as follows: 1. Choose a land use suitability goal. 2. Select the goals and criteria that define this goal and get spatial data for each. 3. Use the gathered data to evaluate the quality of each criterion across the landscape, resulting in a raster with values from 1-9. 4. Apply weights to each criterion to indicate its relative contribution to the suitability goal. 5. Combine the weighted criteria to calculate and display the suitability of this land use at each point across the landscape. An individual model was first built for each of some forty individual criteria. Once these functioned successfully, individual criteria were combined with a weighted summation to yield one of three land-use goals (in this case, Residential, Commercial, or Industrial). A final model was then constructed to combined these three goals into a final suitability output. In addition, two conditional elements were placed on this final output (one to give already-developed areas a very high suitability score for development [a "9"] and a second to give permanently conserved areas and other undevelopable lands a very low suitability score for development [a "1"]). Because this model was meant to serve primarily as an illustration of how to do land-use suitability analysis, the criteria, evaluation rationales, and weightings were chosen by the modeler for expediency; however, a land-use analysis meant to guide real-world actions and decisions would need to rely far more heavily on a variety of scientific and stakeholder input.