Integrated Site Suitability Analysis for Urban Development Using Remote Sensing and GIS Based Multicriteria Evaluation Technique in Wolaita Sodo Town and Surrounding Area, SNNPR, Ethiopia

Urban Land suitability assessment is an important fundamental work in urban land development. Land suitability assessment, in the context of land use planning, is a bridging phase linking land resources assessment to any land use decision-making process. This study demonstrates the use of Geographic Information System (GIS) tools and numerical Multi-Criteria Evaluation (MCE) techniques for selection of suitable sites for urban development of a Sodo Town and surrounding area. Six factors (land use, road proximity, soil type, river proximity, geomorphology and slope) were identified for criteria evaluation. Weights for each criterion are generated by comparing with each other according to their importance. Criteria weights was develop by employing GIS based Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) such as Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) for evaluating the suitability of the urban land site selection. Pair wise comparison matrix indicates weights for land use (=0.3729), road proximity (=0.1440), soil type (=0.1826), river proximity (=0.0714), geomorphology (=0.1777) and slope (=0.0514). Consistency Ratio, (CR =0.01) <0.10 indicated a reasonable level of consistency in the pair wise comparisons. After the final suitability analysis map was obtained from weighted overlay in Arc GIS Spatial Analyst Tools; it was found that from the available area 19.234sq km falls under low suitable, 4.579sq. km under moderately suitable and 5.048sq. km under high suitable. The result shows that highly suitable areas for urban development is agricultural land and open forest. Keywords: Urban Land suitability, Geographic Information System (GIS); Remote Sensing (RS); Multi-criteria Evaluation (MCE); Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP); Spatial Analysis tool. DOI: 10.7176/JEES/9-5-01 Publication date:May 31st 201