Introduction 
The principle objective of land appraisal is to levy a fair, reasonable, and 
acceptable price on land value. Due to limited land supply and rapid economic 
growth in Taiwan, dramatic changes have occured in the present land use pattern. 
Therefore, it is important and also difficult to éonduct a good land appraisal . 
In the traditional land appraisal practice, an appraiser uses his professional 
knowledge and experiences to evaluate the price of a parcel of land. He inputs 
influencial factors into a land appraisal model or formula to calculate the land price. 
The most important tasks in the appraisal procedure are data collection, 
manipulation, and analysis. Even recently, most of the procedures above still 
count on analog media inputs which are not only very complicate to process but also 
time and labor consuming. As the development of GIS techniques, it has made a 
great improvement in vector and raster data collection, manipulation and analysis. 
Consequently, to use GIS techniques will-increase the feasibility and efficiency in 
land appraisal. 
This study first selects a suitable land appraisal model through literature 
review, then applies it to land appraisal practice for Taichung city. The model 
selected considers the width of the adjacent roads, the distance to the Central 
-Business District (CBD), the distance to the nearest grocery store, the distance to the 
nearest park and the distance to displeased facilities ás the impact factors in land 
appraisal practice. Second, GIS techniques are used to input and manipulate 
graphical and attribute data. Third, it integrates functions such as-measure, buffer, 
intersect, overlay, and shortest path in GIS into a land appraisal model to calculate 
and anályze the land price. Finally, it concludes this study. 
Literature Review 
There are many approaches in land appraisal, namely, market approach, cost 
approach, and income approach. Appraisers seléct appraisal methods depend on 
the specific goals and interests. No matter which approache chosen, the 
requirement of sufficient data is common to all appraisal approaches. For land 
appraisal, appraisers need not only professional knowledge and experiences but also 
accurate data in order to calculate a reliable price. Therefore, the key point to 
achieve a successful appraisal is how to collect, and analyze data efficiently. 
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International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXI, Part B4. Vienna 1996