Land suitability location analysis for housing development using GIS

Application and implementation of location suitability analyses are powered through the use of GIS along with spatial analysis component, which enables the creation of buffers, overlay, termination, proximity analysis, spatial unity, map algebra, reclassification of raster and other operations. In terms of land suitability, GIS helps the user to define which locations are most appropriate or inappropriate for certain developments. Consequently, GIS as a tool becomes more important to provide support for decision makers. This analysis takes into account environmental and socioeconomic factors as determinant of urban land development. This analysis requires first finding spatial, environmental and socio-economic constraints and then finding the land suitable for development of residential areas according to specified criteria’s. Hence, two preliminary results derive mainly from this analysis, such as composite (raster) map of restrictions for housing developments, and composite (raster) map of suitability housing development. Once these two composite maps are completed using specified GIS operations and functions, it is created the final map of site suitability for housing development. In creating the final map several factors had been used in total to establish the restriction model and also many criteria’s divided into five classes for establishing a map of land suitability for residential development in Prishtina city, namely in the study area