Cost-suitability land modeling for current and proposed transport infrastructure along Timiș-Cerna Corridor (Romania)

Cost-suitability land modeling is one of the mandatory conditions for the proposal of new transport development projects, in order to achieve optimal costs of design and construction. In the present study, we intend to present a model for assessing land suitability for current and proposed transport infrastructure along the Orient-East Med TEN-T Corridor, in the mountainous region of the Timiș-Cerna Corridor (Romania). The relevant factors for our analysis were outsourced from various thematic data sets and refer to lithology, morphological and morphometrical properties of landforms, soil characteristics and climatic setting of the study area. Conservation of natural environment and human habitat was also taken into consideration by means of analyzing land use patterns and spatial distribution of protected areas. The methodology is based on the principles of cartographic algebra and vector overlay analysis, currently implemented in various GIS applications. The results of our study aim for the identification of critical sectors along the current and proposed transport infrastructure, which intersect areas with high development cost and low suitability. Starting from our observations, specialists in transport networks and spatial planning could make use of dedicated computation algorithms to identify and describe optimal routes for future infrastructure projects that would connect the southern and western parts of the country.