Identification of Potential Sites for Urban Development Using GIS Based Multi Criteria Evaluation Technique. A Case Study of Shimla Municipal Area, Shimla District, Himachal Pradesh, India

Manish KUMAR1, Vivekananda BISWAS1
1 Kumaun University, Department of Geography, Centre of Excellence for NRDMS in Uttarakhand, SSJ Campus, Almora, INDIA
E-mail: manish.ks1@gmailcom, thevivek21@gmail.com
Pages: 45-51

Abstract. Identification of potential sites for urban development in hilly areas is one of the critical issues of planning. Site suitability analysis has become unavoidable for finding appropriate site for various developmental initiatives, especially in the undulating terrain of the hills. The study illustrates the use of geographic information system (GIS) and numerical multi criteria evaluation (MCE) technique for selection of suitable sites for urban development in Shimla Municipal Area, Shimla district, Himachal Pradesh. For this purpose Cartosat 1 satellite data were used to generate various thematic layers using ArcGIS software. Five criteria, i.e. slope, road proximity, land use/cover, lithology and aspect were used for land evaluation. The generated thematic maps of these criteria were standardized using pairwise comparison matrix known as analytical hierarchy process (AHP). A weight for each criterion was generated by comparing them with each other according to their importance. With the help of these weights and criteria, final site suitability map was prepared.

K e y w o r d s:  site suitability, GIS, multi criteria evaluation (MCE), pairwise comparison matrix, analytical hierarchy process