developing a strategic decision-making process for local energy ...

Inappropriate land-use allocation and zoning, inadequate communication, inadequate
laws and regulations, misguided developers’ interest, imbalanced market, less
participation (decision makers/policy makers), less community perception and interest
on the project, incompletion geothermal conservation zone map, private land ownership,
congested parcel size and vacancy, unused residence and office ratio (mixed land-use),
less residence equivalent (RE) and existing building ratio and untidy land block density
(user energy density) are defined as negative explanatory independent variables in this
study.
The independent variables determine the dependent variables which are
“effectiveness”, “adoption” and “fidelity”. The effectiveness concept shows that the
degree of relationship between GEDHS and land-use allocation and planning process,
and the adoption concept shows that the degree of relationship between GEDHS and all
related participants/actors (community, NGOs, local and central governors, decision
makers/ policy makers and developers). In this study, the fidelity of plan proposal is the
degree to which it is accurate the existing development (implementation) plan.
Collecting all variables and the analysis method are key points in this thesis, and
due to available data on the geothermal case area and infrastructure dimensions, socioeconomic
dimension and land-use dimension, the three points are detailed in the
geothermal energy district heating utilization in geographical analysis perspective; (a)
socio-economic effects on society (raising the life standard, new job opportunities,
increase in house and land prices, socio-political organizations, socio-cultural
problems), (b) spatial or land-use effects on the natural and built-up environment, and
(c) policy effects (the stakeholders’ or actors’ viewpoint and approaches, relationship
between geothermal energy and planning Laws and Regulations). Thus, planning
process requires a new theoretical and practical reconsideration to tackle the issue.
The thesis aims and contributes to general literature in;
• Understanding the effects of geothermal energy input on planning process and
determining the allocation use of land. Two most important dependent variables
are in the geothermal energy input concept are adoption of participants and
effectiveness of GEDHS’s land-use decisions.
• Examining the independent variable’s factors affecting geothermal energy
utilization on land-use plan in planning process. Although the possibility of any
relationship of other planning inputs into energy, in the specific case of
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