INTEGRATION OF GIS BASED SUITABILITY ANALYSIS AND MULTI CRITERIA EVALUATION FOR URBAN LAND USE PLANNING; CONTRIBUTION FROM THE ANALYTIC HIERACHY PROCESS

摘要

Rapid urbanization is proceeding and pushing up the demand for various land uses mainly residential, commercial, industrial etc. Indeed land is the essential ingredient in this process as in all urban growth. This growth has been associated with increasing pressure on land for human settlements and related urban services. The problem in Sri Lanka like more developing countries, is not a shortage of developable land, but the in effective and unplanned mechanisms the use to ensure supply of suitable land for urban expansion. The trend of the development of this nature bears a heavy impact on the urban land development as evident from the horizontal expansion of urban centers. As a result of that increased development pressure on agricultural lands in immediate surroundings of urban centers as further aggravated the problem of conservation of the natural environment. In present urbanization paid insufficient attention for the environment in developing countries. As a result of that ecologically valuable lands are converting to urban development without consideration of the environment. Hence there should be pay more attention for multi-criteria land evaluation for avoiding these facts. A GIS is a powerful tool for land use planners in their effort to make land development processes more efficient and attractive. In recently fuzzy logic screen as the basic for representing and manipulating in exactness in a relational geographic database and multi-criteria methodology was connected with these recent models. Saaty's analytic hierarchy process (AHP) (1980) is compatible with both these research directions. This paper demonstrates the application at fuzzy set theory in GIS for urban land use planning. The results indicate the future land directions and present land evaluation compatible with multiple criteria methodology. Present land evaluation is most useful for planners for there sound judgment on land allocation.