This talk introduces decision makers to several key issues involved in developing an objective method for ranking or scoring parcels of land.  The problem is a difficult one because land values depend on many factors, or “attributes,” ranging from environmental to commercial to recreational.  Any ranking system implicitly makes trade-offs among these factors, balancing gains in some against losses in others when comparing parcels to each other.
	The theory of making decisions with multiple objectives has established conditions under which simple ranking formulas can be developed.  Those conditions have to be checked by exploring specific (usually hypothetical) trade-offs with the decision makers.  Controlled exploration, called “conjoint scaling” by Keeney and Raiffa (Decisions With Multiple Objectives, Cambridge University Press, 1993), can simultaneously discover the best ways to measure the attributes and appropriate ways to combine their measurements mathematically into a scoring function that correctly reproduces any consistent set of preferences.