Land Valuation Systems using GIS Technology Case of Matara Urban Council Area, Sri Lanka

Land valuation is the process of assessing the characteristics of a given piece of land based on experience and judgment. The objective of land valuation is to determine a market value or benefit value which is fundamentally determined by its location. This emphasizes the significance of spatial factors in decision making of land valuation. In order to make adequate value estimation for a land, there are many tangible and intangible land valuation factors that should be taken into account during the valuation process. A sufficient estimation can be done by analyzing a certain amount of land characteristics in an objective way. In this research project, to determine the market value of a land, it was used seven parameters namely, distance to schools, distance to roads, distance to police station, distance to railway station, distance to health facilities, land-use type and distance to government buildings. For each and every factor, the shape files were created using the 1:10,000 data which is prepared by the Survey Department of Sri Lanka. The weights which were determined by the questionnaire survey and Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) technique were used to categorize above maps in a GIS environment. The final results were shown a remarkable result about the values of the land. Finally, the area was divided into land value classes and categorized as very low, low, moderate, high and very high valued areas. It can be discovered that the total area is having a higher value, as the area is well equipped with infra structure facilities and other facilities. It can be concluded that this kind of model would be very much needed in the process of land valuation. Further, the study suggested that the model should be enriched with a number of parameters than this proposed model.