Land development in the vicinity of hazardous facilities: a compromise assignment procedure

A procedure based on the assignment problem formulation and the paradigm of compromise programming is presented to aid in the determination of 'compromise assignments' of land-development types to parcels of land in the vicinity of hazardous facilities, which minimize risk to human health while maximizing land-development benefits. The basic procedure is described and illustrated with a hypothetical example, special cases and treatment of goal trade-offs are discussed, and a case-study application of the procedure is presented. The proposed approach provides a simple land-development decision aid tool which addresses the question of trade-offs between risk and development benefits; it can accommodate other decision criteria as well as alternative preference structures of the decisionmakers; and it applies to similar multiple-criteria decision problems.