Developing the emerging development pressure index for Wisconsin

Abstract

Recognizing the importance of consistency in the state's corridor planning activities, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation uses a statewide, systematic process for identifying priority management corridors. As part of this prioritization process, an index is needed to reflect the likelihood of future residential and commercial development. This paper describes a methodology for creating such an index, referred to as the Development Pressure Index (DPI). A high DPI suggests a higher likelihood of future growth around the highway segment and indicates the need for increased level of service or capacity on the highway segment. A wide range of data - from population and economic projections to land development plans and forest protection programs - are incorporated into the computation of the proposed DPI. A geographic information system is used to perform various spatial join and aggregation methods to derive a set of growth indicators. A scoring and weighing process is then applied to collapse the multiple indicators into one index. The empirical results and the subsequent assessment of the results reveal that the proposed methodology provides an effective and objective way to account for multiple influencing factors of development pressure.