The principal purpose of the project is to ensure that a broad variety of land-based data now being collected and stored at the local, regional, state, and national levels in a variety of formats and classification systems be standardized so that such data would be compatible and, thus, easily transferable between jurisdictions, agencies, and institutions. While the use of such a revamped system would be voluntary, potential users would be strongly inclined to embrace such a system because it would increase opportunities for reciprocal data sharing, both horizontally, from geographic area to geographic area, and vertically, between local, regional, state, and nationaljurisdictions.

The recent and anticipated proliferation of information-handling technologies (such as advanced relational databases and geographic information systems), the development of the National Geographic Database, as well as the promise of an expanded and enhanced national "information highway" make this project particularly timely. Moreover, the adoption of a revised classification system in light of new technologies would have significant productivity implications for the public sector in an era of scarce financial resources.

In addition, a new and revised classification system would broaden the subject matter of the original 1965 SLUCM, which addressed only matters pertaining to land use. Today, we find practitioners collecting, storing, and manipulating three broad categories of land-based information: (a) land-cover information related primarily to the existing natural environment; (b) land-use information related primarily to the existing built environment; and (c) land-rights information related primarily to fee and less-than-fee ownership and to development rights, such as those prescribed by zoning and other regulatory measures. The purpose of the project would be to create a classification system capable of accommodating all three categories of land-based information and not just land use.

Finally, it is the purpose of this project to design a classification protocol that is flexible and adaptable to changing conditions and technologies.

AUDIENCE

The principal target audience for these products will be practitioners and policy makers working for public and private agencies and institutions that collect, store, analyze, manipulate, or distribute land-based information in the U.S., whether that data be land-use, land-cover, or land-rights information.

A sampling of some of the people that represent the target audience include the following:

• Town, city, county, or regional land-use planners conducting inventories of land-use, land-cover, or land-rights information as part of a comprehensive, strategic, or growth management plan
• Metropolitan planning organization (MPO) transportation planners aggregating local land-use information in order to comply with the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA)
• County assessors compiling parcel-based land-ownership information as part of a tax-mapping or reappraisal effort
• Federal or state environmental management officials mapping sanitary landfills, aquifer protection areas, wetlands, non-point and point sources of pollution, air-quality non-attainment areas, hazardous waste sites, sensitive receptors of pollution, lands suitable for park or wilderness acquisition, etc.
• Federal or state emergency management officials mapping coastal or riverine flood-prone areas, areas subject to seismic disturbance or mud slides, wildfire hazard areas
• Federal or state planners needing local land-based data for evaluating impacts of federal and state installations on adjacent lands
• Federal or state transportation officials needing land-based information related to right-of-way acquisition, land-use projections, transit ridership projections, air-quality projections
• Private- and public-sector planners and demographers who currently use publicly available land-based data for specialized studies.