GIS based group decision making analysis for educational land use allocation: case study of district 6, Isfahan

In this study, a group decision-making approach based on Geographical Information System (GIS) has been developed for solving educational land use allocation problem. Most researches conducted in the field of land use allocation, use multi-criteria decision making techniques with a view individual decision. However, in this article, land use allocation problem has been considered as a group issue that requires the participation of different expertise and perspectives in the decision making process. In this context, Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) method is used to determine the weight of criteria and aggregation of individual judgments (AIJ) method utilized to aggregate priorities of decision makers/experts.
Proposed model has been implemented at district 6 of Isfahan as a case study; to allocate educational land uses and the results has been compared to the outcome of individual decisions. To allocate high school as an academic land use, land per capita, minimum area, distance to city centers, distance to dependent land uses such as libraries and distance to urban roads, have been considered and modeled as criteria. Utilizing a sensitivity analysis and comparing the result of individual decisions (each expert) and group decision (AIJ result) is showed some disagreement. However, all experts are dedicated same priority for the first three sites with plot number 5453, 4 and 9 to allocate as high school. The results indicates that group decision making approach in land use allocation problem make it possible analysis of opposite ideas offered by different experts and help decision maker to choice an alternative (site) obtained majority. In this research we consider same weight for all decision makers. In fact, each expert based on his knowledge and skills should have different weight that must be considered to aggregate individual judgments. Also by using  fuzzy based methods, we can involve uncertainty of judgments and decision making at the proposed model. This would be considered at the next work of the authors.