Tuesday, November 14, 2006 - 2:30 PM
139-3
Projecting Future Urbanization Near Installations and the Potential Impacts on Future Military Activities.
Wayne Hartel, Univ of Illinois, 611 Taft Dr, Champaign, IL 61820
Increasing urban growth in the vicinity of military installations is negatively affecting the military’s ability to fulfill its current and future missions. The threat of encroachment on military installations has been growing as populations move away from urban centers in search of land for new development. As communities surrounding military installations grow, the benefits of retaining military lands can be obscured as its importance to local economy declines, and the noise, dust, smoke, and radio frequency transmission from military training activities can be viewed as a nuisance. Consequently, it is important for the military installation and local communities to plan the future together. Sustainable land use decisions must consider the interest of both the community and installation operations. Greater coordination would help to ensure that communities have room to grow and prosper while avoiding negative impacts on the nearby military installation.
The Land use Evolution and Impact Assessment Model (LEAM) is an innovative tool developed at theUniversity of Illinois that can help the military and local communities plan together and develop regionally based thinking. LEAM simulates land use change across space and time, and enables planners, policymakers, and local stakeholders to visualize and test a variety of policies and public investments and their consequences. In this presentation we will examine the results of applying LEAM to Fort Benning in Georgia and Scott Air Force Base in Illinois . The results indicate where and how much growth is projected to occur in the military installation region over the next thirty years and how this may affect military training/testing opportunities in the future. We played out various “what-if” scenarios to see how policies, economic development projects, and large public investments will affect future land use patterns and military training opportunities.
The Land use Evolution and Impact Assessment Model (LEAM) is an innovative tool developed at the