In the context of the development of Land Cover Classification System, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the United Nations Environmental Programme define land use as "characterised by the arrangements, activities and inputs people undertake in a certain land cover type to produce, change or maintain it".

Land use information relates to the geographic location and extent of the spatial unit under consideration, the purpose of activities undertaken, their temporal aspects and the technologies employed (e.g. fertilizer, irrigation...). Quantitative measures such as those related to areas and products prove useful to understant and manage the reasons and incentives underlying the current land use and its future development (e.g. land tenure, labour costs, market conditions...). Agricultural land-use data are important for the validation of agricultural land evaluation, for early warning for food security; natural disaster relief operations; farming systems and policy formulation, for example in relation to sustainable resources use. (1)

For urbanised regions, the use of land and its value, depend on the infrastructural network that serves specific area: electricity, water supply, communication and transportation systems are key assets to consider when valuing land. In urban areas there are relatively small spatial ownership possibilities and a high rate of change in land ownership and use. Cities grow fast and authorities have to deal with the associated costs of providing urban infrastructures. (2)

Land use regulation and practices are very well established but land monitoring is becoming insufficient if not integrated into urban and regional planning. Land supply and capacity monitoring involves measuring, analysing and evaluating land availability and its capacity to accommodate for further development.