The ever-increasing development of cities due to population growth and migration has led to unplanned constructions and great changes in urban spatial structure, especially the physical development of cities in unsuitable places, which requires conscious guidance and fundamental organization. It is therefore necessary to identify suitable sites for future development of cities and prevent urban sprawl as one of the main concerns of urban managers and planners. In this study, to determine the suitable sites for urban development in the county of Ahwaz, the effective biophysical and socioeconomic criteria (including 27 sub-criteria) were initially determined based on literature review and interviews with certified experts. In the next step, a database of criteria and sub-criteria was prepared. Standardization of values and unification of scales in map layers were done using fuzzy logic. The criteria and sub-criteria were weighted by analytic network process (ANP) in the Super Decision software. Next, the map layers were overlaid using weighted linear combination (WLC) in the GIS software. According to the research findings, the final land suitability map was prepared with five suitability classes of very high (5.86 %), high (31.93 %), medium (38.61 %), low (17.65 %), and very low (5.95 %). Also, in terms of spatial distribution, suitable lands for urban development are mainly located in the central and southern parts of the Ahwaz County. It is expected that integration of fuzzy logic and ANP model will provide a better decision support tool compared with other models. The developed model can also be used in the land suitability analysis of other cities.
Maddahi Z., Jalalian A., Kheirkhah Zarkesh M.M., Honarjo N. (2017): Land suitability analysis for rice cultivation using a GIS-based fuzzy multi-criteria decision making approach: central part of Amol District, Iran. Soil & Water Res., 12: 29−38.Land suitability analysis and preparing land use maps is one of the most beneficial applications of the Geographic Information System (GIS) in planning and managing land recourses. The main objective of this study was to develop a fuzzy multi-criteria decision making technique integrated with the GIS to assess suitable areas for rice cultivation in Amol District, Iran. Several suitability factors including soil properties, climatic conditions, topography, and accessibility were selected based on the FAO framework and experts' opinions. A fuzzy analytical hierarchical process (FAHP) was used to determine the weights of the various criteria. The GIS was used to overlay and generate criteria maps and a land suitability map. The study area has been classified into four categories of rice cultivation suitability (highly suitable, suitable, moderately suitable, and unsuitable). The present study has attempted to introduce and use the FAHP method to land suitability analysis and to select lands in order to be used as best as possible. Areas that are classified as highly suitable and suitable for rice cultivation constitute about 59.8% of the total area of the region. The results of the present research indicate that the FAHP is an efficient strategy to increase the accuracy of the weight of the criteria affecting the analysis of land suitability.
Rapid land-use/land-cover changes in suburbs of metropolitan cities of Iran have recently caused serious environmental damages. Detection of these changes can be a very important step in urban planning and optimal use of natural resources. Accordingly, the present study was carried out to track land-use/land-cover (LULC) changes of Ahwaz County in southwestern Iran using remote sensing techniques over a period of 26 years, from 1987 to 2013. For this, ISODATA algorithm and Maximum Likelihood were initially used for unsupervised and supervised classifications of the satellite images. The accuracy of the LULC maps was checked by the Kappa Coefficient and the Overall Accuracy methods. As the final step, the LULC changes were detected using the cross-tabulation technique. The obtained results indicated that urban and agricultural areas have been increased about 57.5 and 84.5 %, respectively, from 1987 to 2013. Further, the area of poorly vegetated regions, in the same period, has been decreased to approximately 36 %. The largest land conversion area belongs to the poorly vegetated regions, which have been declined to about 10,371 and 1,334 ha during 1987-2007 and 2007-2013, respectively. Approximately 1,670 and 382 ha of the agricultural lands have also been changed to built-up areas by about 1,670 and 382 ha during the same periods. As a result, it was found that the northwest, southwest, and south of the county were highly subjected to urban development. This would be of great importance for urban planning decision-making faced by the planners of the city in the present and future.
Land subsidence is a morphological phenomenon, which causes negative environmental and economic consequences for human societies. Therefore, identifying the areas prone to subsidence can be one of the necessary measures for reducing the potential risks. This study aims to evaluate the efficiency of the support vector machine (SVM) algorithm and weighted overlay index (WOI) models in zoning the rate of land subsidence hazard in Hashtgerd plain, Iran. First, the 19 criteria include groundwater depletion, groundwater extraction, aquifer thickness, alluvium thickness, aquifer recharge, well density, drainage density, groundwater depth, lithology, bedrock depth, average annual precipitation, average annual temperature, climate type, agricultural use, urban use, industrial use, distance from rivers and streams, distance from roads, distance from faults were considered. Then, the layers were weighed based on the Best-Worst Method (BWM). The results of BWM indicated that the factors of groundwater extraction (0.219), lithology (0.157), and groundwater depletion (0.079) have a greater effect on the potential for subsidence hazard. Moreover, the results of validation by performing ROC curve showed that the accuracy of RBF-SVM, LN-SVM, SIG-SVM, PL-SVM, and WOI were 95.7, 94.3, 94.9, 93.2, and 90%, respectively. Based on the ROC results, all of the models for preparing the subsidence hazard map in Hashtgerd plain exhibit excellent accuracy. Therefore, all of the models used here can predict the areas vulnerable to subsidence properly. In this study, the five land subsidence hazard maps were used as new input factors and integrated using fuzzy gamma-ensemble methods to make better hazard maps. The results of the ensemble model indicated that 19.3% of Hashtgerd plain is in the zone of high to very high sensitivity. The results of this study can help planners in managing and reducing the possible hazards of subsidence.
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