GIS-BASED MULTI-CRITERIA DECISION ANALYSIS TO LOCATIONAL SUITABILITY FOR URBAN RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT: A SPATIAL PLANNING APPROACH

Back to Page Authors: Neel Chaminda Withanage

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Keywords: analytic hierarchy process, GIS, multi-criteria decision analysis, suitability

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Abstract: As a developing country identification of potential sites for residential development especially in congested urban areas is one of the critical issues of planning and spatial decision making in Sri Lanka. GIS greatly helps to analysis of different parameters in allocating lands for different utilities. GIS based Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) can be used as an approach of reducing cost and time in spatial decision making including urban and regional planning which achieve promising results. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) overlooking best solutions as one of the MCDA. This study carried out to identify and evaluate the applicability of GIS based MCDA technique to ranking land suitability for residential development in Kandy MC aided with AHP. For analysis five major criteria such as land, social infrastructure, physical infrastructure, economic activities and environment parameters were utilized. Based on semi- structured questionnaire survey results weights were assigned for each criteria following AHP weighting method. The study followed up five steps as criteria selection, scorings, weight assignment using AHP and creation of suitability maps and MCDA model. This methodology is more useful for urban planners and related decision makers. Finally this will become an advanced spatial decision support approach that optimizes the objectives of urban and regional planning in any context.

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