As part of a means for preventing sprawl and for deliberately managing land, the Land Suitability Assessment system was introduced by the Land Use Panning Law in 2002, and was enforced from 2003. The Land Suitability Assessment system is the basic survey that is carried out in a case with the aim of drawing up a plan for several kinds of land uses or for installment of the major facilities, or in the stage of systematically judging the land to be preserved and the land available for being developed. However, as the Land Suitability Assessment is enforced actually, many problems are appearing such as a problem about connecting with the city management plan, a problem about credibility in selecting indicator and regulating threshold, the insufficiency of reflecting regional characteristics, inaccuracy of implementing basic DB, and lack of professionalism in a working-level staff. Accordingly, this study performed a case study on the Land Suitability Assessment centering on the Assessment System I through segmentation of the management area in Yeosu city, thereby having elicited that the Land Suitability Assessment is a matter that needs to be improved in the institutional and methodological aspect.
There will be necessity for being preceded the physical & human-based implementation in the local self-government, which will perform the Land Suitability Assessment such as consolidation of professional manpower and of the operating system for the integrative DB management. As for a method of assessment by plot, there is necessity for promoting credibility or efficiency in Suitability Assessment by utilizing a method of sorting uniform region through applying the cluster analysis technique of being utilized in GIS(Geographic Information System) and of grouping and evaluating this by bloc and district, or by plot, if necessary.
Also, there is necessity for more segmenting the assessment grade in order to reinforce discernment by considering general situation of being gathered plots with similar attribute in light of characteristics in region to be performed. A result of assessment fails to be quite differentiated. Even the factor of assessment is limited. Thus, the assessment result may be elicited that confirms the present status at any moment. So, the result of Land Suitability Assessment will be needed the process of mutually verifying by connecting with other assessment systems related to the land plan such as Environmental Impact Assessment.
As the above, the current method has a principle as saying of being able to reflect the regional conditions. However, it is a situation that is absent in specific assessment method or clear criterion for this. Thus, a practical plan needs to be arranged that can reflect a gap of development between regions or the difference of the regional conditions in the assessment indicator, by considering that the assessment factor, which can reflect the regionally special situations, may have great influence upon deciding on the suitability grade.