THE DEVELOPMENT OF A WINDOWS-BASED INTERFACE FOR THE LAND USE AND TRANSPORTATION OPTIMIZATION (LUTO) MODEL

The Land Use and Transportation Optimization (LUTO) Study was commissioned in early 1982 to help formulate future development strategy for the Hong Kong Territory. In essence, it is to determine the population and employment distribution patterns in order to best satisfy a given planning objective. A mathematical programming approach was adopted in the LUTO study to develop a simple direct solution to the land use-transportation optimization problem. The evaluation criteria were formulated as objective functions to be optimized together with a number of constraints. LUTO programs are organized into sets of modules, which were operated in the mainframe computer. With the advancement of microcomputer technology, a window-based interface using Visual Basic applications has been built to customize the LUTO functionality. The interface serves as an interactive link between end-users and batch components to enhance user-friendliness and manage land use and transport parameters in an effective and efficient manner for the validation and modernization of LUTO model. With the recent fast development of the Pearl River Delta region, a user-friendly version of the LUTO model is very useful for the performance analysis of strategic infrastructure development in the region.