This is first of two technical reports documenting the Land-Use Change Analysis System (or LUCAS) developed in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Tennessee. This report (Part I) presents the Motif-based user interface for utilizing LUCAS. The internal design and implementation on a distributed network of workstations will constitute the second report (Part II) scheduled for release in Spring 1995.
The LUCAS Graphical User Interface (GUI) is a Windows-based user interface that allows access to the LUCAS software for users of different levels of experience. Early user of LUCAS are expected to be experts in landscape management. Explicit knowledge of the integration of socioeconomic and ecological variables is not required by users such as ecologists, economists, sociologists, or forestry personnel. To accomodate the needs of such experts, a graphical user interface (GUI) was developed for LUCAS. A GUI is the best way to provide an intuitive interface for an application which integrates interdisciplinary data of different scales and type. One of the most challenging aspects of designing an intuitive interface for LUCAS was to first understand the needs of landscape management, and then to develop the interface with these requirements in mind. The LUCAS GUI can be compiled and executed on any workstation that supports the X-Window System Release 5 (X11R5) and the Open Software Foundation's (OSF) Motif 1.2.