Land Valuation Using an Innovative Model Combining Machine Learning and Spatial Context

Feride Tanrikulu, Timothy L. Haithcoat, Grant J. Scott, Matthew Foulkes, Ilker Ersoy

Abstract: Land valuations are used by buyers, sellers, regulators, and authorities to assess fair value. Urbanization demands a modern and efficient land valuation system. An alternative method that integrates geographic information systems and machine learning can produce more reliable, repeatable, and accurate valuations. The land’s value can vary significantly based on the parcel’s neighborhood and context. Geospatial analytics, remote sensing and vector information were integrated to predict land values in Springfield, Missouri, USA. A point geodatabase was assembled using calculated proximities, accessibility, and various index measures. Supervised machine learning models were trained using government-provided appraised land values as ground truth. The database approach integrated spatial context and socioeconomic data. Slight differences in performance between random forest (98%, 0.13) and gradient boosting (98%, 0.15) algorithms were found (Adj. R2, STD).