Ecovillage Suitability Analysis

Over the past year, regional developement leaders proposed to revitalize the Val d'Espoir region by opening the first permaculture school of Québec. The project's motivations are twofolds: diversifying the local economy while bringing young people in the region.

Overseen by the Société de Développement Économique de Percé (SDEP), the project has gathered much support from government organization and the local population.

Throughout the consultation process with various stakeholders, many evoked the idea to create an ecovillage in the region of Val d'Espoir to complement the permaculture school project. Beyong being a set of practices in agriculture, permaculture can be understood as a way of life which would translate well in an intentional community based on an eco-responsible lifestyle.

Although the project of establishing an intentional community based on agricultural practices near Val d'Espoir will require much local consultation and grassroot initiatives, some preliminary research can be done to inform stakeholders down the road.

Part of this research involves considering potential sites for the future community to settle. In this regard, tools such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are indispensable in informing the decision-making process.

GIS has a long history of providing powerful and creative tools such as suitability modeling to inform the best practices of regional planning. Building a suitability model involves combining layers of geographic information to produce maps that provide insights on the most suitable areas for a given development project.

This process is usually carried through a computer model which assigns a suitability score to various geographic features before combining them into a color-coded map.

Suitability analysis models are based on various predetermined factors generally including social, environmental and geographical information.

After calculating the final score of each point on the model, I was able to produce a final suitability map illustrating the most suitable (green) to least suitable areas (red).

The next step was to use Spacial Analyst to determine the average score of each parcels.

Consistently with the various factors used in the model, the most suitable parcels are accesible by the road, located near the permaculture school, are on a leveled slope and away from wetlands.

However, the model also shows clusters of parcels presenting suitable features but in a location that perhaps would not have been considered without the model.

The method used was a classic suitability model built into ArcGIS Pro's ModelBuilder. This tool enables geography professionals including human ecologist to map the process of constructing their models so that it can later be improved and altered. The result is a dynamic process that is both a product and a input of the decision-making process.

Using the present model as a baseline, stakeholders should refine the factors used in the model's first iteration in partnership with the human and non-human needs of the future ecovillage site. These might include the proximity to the town of Percé, the cost of acquiring land, the presence of a combination of forest and agricultural land cover etc. Key habitats for endangered species should also be considered along with a refined understanding of the impact of human presence on the local fauna and flora.