International Journal of Engineering Research ISSN:2319-6890)(online),2347-5013(print) Volume No.5, Issue No.4, pp : 260-263 1 April 2016 IJER@2016 doi : 10.17950/ijer/v5s4/408 Page 260 Use of GIS-based Multi-Criteria Decision Making to Optimal Site Selection in an Illustrative Study Area in the Center of Iran Hamed Koohpayehzadeh Esfahani 1 , Mohsen Sadegh Amal Nik 2 1 Discipline of Civil Engineering, College of Science Technology and Engineering, James Cook University, Townsville, QLD, Australia 2 Faculty of Industrial Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran Corresponding Email: (hkesfahaani@gmail.com) Abstract—In order to obtain national and international high-speed transport system, optimization of choosing the airport place is very important in country development. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) have possible in using the linguistic variables along quantitative variables and essentially is based on expert opinions. In recent years in order to increase the capability of AHP, this method combined with the fuzzy method and in the Fuzzy-AHP algorithm is presented. In this paper, analytic hierarchy process (AHP), one of multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) techniques in the fuzzy environment is applied to select the optimal alternative for airport site selection in a case study. Results show that using AHP in the fuzzy environment improves decision making through considering more important factors in decision making. So the goal of this research is to investigate the environmental factors incorporating with airport site selection and optimal design for airport site selection using the GIS-based methodology in an illustrative study area. Keywords— Airport Site Selection, GIS, Environmental factors, Multi-criteria decision, AHP. I. Introduction Airports as significant transport projects have been developed dramatically in many countries. Using high technologies to provide fast and easy national and international connection are the main aspects of country’s development in terms of economy, culture and international communication. However, optimal airport site selection as the first step to obtaining its benefits is the challenging task for planners and decision makers due to the multi-criteria effect on the final decision such as a number of environmental, operational criteria as well as land use planning. In addition, it is considerable that the new airport should be treated within the entire system domain. However, because of the complexity of the transportation system and the lack of certain socio-economic and environmental indicators and parameters, this particular problem is treated in isolation. There is various multi-objective associated with the airport site selection problem. These objectives have to be traded off to find the optimal location pattern of airports and their capacities. This problem is all the more important in developing countries where resources are scarce, and data necessary to make rational decisions are either insufficient or inaccurate. The paper aims to investigation airport site selection using environmental criteria in an illustrative highly complex area. Nowadays, Geographic information systems (GIS) have widely used as an essential tool for spatial planning and management. The main reason for GIS popularity is that GIS can be used as a powerful tool in the planning process by incorporating multiple criteria in decision making [1, 2]. Therefore, GIS is particularly valuable in an address to the assessment of choice alternatives, based on spatially related criteria along with visualization and data management. Concerning the evaluation of suitable locations for airport site selection, GIS may contribute as a decision support tool aiming to identify economically viable and environmental feasible sites, using a large amount of spatial data related to various technical, economic, social and environmental criteria. To deal with these often conflicting criteria, a spatial multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) model should be integrated into a GIS environment in order to provide a powerful tool aiming at evaluating land suitability for airport locations. This decision support tool will be useful for assessing and managing a variety of spatial data, incorporating at the same time people's (i.e. decision makers, planners, stakeholders, policy makers, etc.) preferences within the decision-making process[3]. Recently, a number of studies combining GIS with multi-criteria analysis to investigate land for the suitable applicability include wind farm site location [4-8]; landfill site selection [9, 10]; dam location [11]; airport site selection [12-14]. Basically, several factors influence on the selection of an alternative for the suitable location of the airport. Taking into account all of these factors makes the decision-making problem so complex. Thus, multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods are applied to tackle this problem. One widely used MCDM method is the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) which has been used in various managerial areas from hydrogen production methods [15] to motor cleaning systems and many others. In addition, AHP has been applied for water resource management in many studies such as Anagnostopoulos, Gratziou [16], Srdjevic [17] and Esfahani and AmalNik [11]. The present study focuses on an environmental, geological and hydrogeological site area properties, where the main advantage is illustrating the important role of environmental issues besides the economic and financial consideration. In this context, the present paper presents a methodology for the systematic assessment of land suitability for airport development, taking into consideration some planning and environmental criteria. The criteria taken into consideration for the selection of an airport site as well as performance