Approach Chosen, Basis of Criteria & Explanation of Steps
In order to ascertain suitable areas for residential development in Falkirk District, the
provided datasets in the Geodatabase folder of this assignment were employed for analysis.
Weighted Overlay Approach, through Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) for Multi-Criteria
Decision Analysis (MCDA) was utilized, although the AHP has its limitations, the Weighted
Overlay tool still proved efficient in most site suitability analysis, and this is also due to its
allowance for reclassification and assignment of suitable weights to available and considered
criteria. With the goal of sustainability; distance to roads, distance to parks, distance to travel
hubs, proximity to schools, proximity to communities & distance to retail centers were the criteria
considered. Slope (in terms of steepness & flatness), as well as rational consideration of some
land use classes (commercial, residential, open spaces, green spaces, amongst others) were
populated as part of the criteria used in the analysis.
The slope tool in the ArcGIS-pro environment was firstly utilized to produce to slope raster
of the study area, in which the elevation data was set as an input raster. The output was a slope
raster of elevation values. Furthermore, the Euclidean Distance (E.D.) tool was used to generate
raster outputs of proximity value ranges of roads, communities, schools, parks, travel hub &
retails. After the E.D. output generation, the Reclassify tool was employed to reclassify the value
range of each E.D. outputs, this entails selection of equal interval reclassification & number of
classes as 10. The reverse new value option was selected to assign suitable value ranges as 10,
while the least suitable as 1. Shortest distance value range was assigned a value of 10 and the
same was done for other criteria. The environment in all steps was checked and the land use raster
was used as a mask data as well as for cell size choice. The Weighted Overlay tool was finally
employed to create the suitability map with assigned weights; Land Use (15%), Community
Proximity (5%), Distance to Park (20%), Distance to Roads & Retails (10% each), Distance to
Travel hubs & schools (5% each), while Slope has a weight of 30%.
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Model Builder
Figure 1: Cartographic Model Builder Diagram of Workflow/Steps
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Figure 2: Map Showing Suitable Areas for Residential Development
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Discussion of findings & Encountered Limitations
It was observed that since a considerable spatial extent of the region is regarded as open
spaces from the provided land use map, this area is seen to be Highly Suitable for residential
developments, green spaces are also very suitable for this development but with utmost
consideration of forest & vegetation sustainability. In contrast, wetlands and fresh water areas
tagged as restricted areas in the analysis due to conversation of water resources, and in fact
construction of residences in waterlogged areas is not feasible for safety purposes.
4.36% of the total land mass is considered Highly Suitable while Suitable, Moderately
Suitable & Slightly Suitable Areas have 37.06%, 26.35%, 11.34% suitability rate. Less Suitable
areas on the other takes up 19.48% of the total area.
Table 1: Proportion of Suitability of the Study Area
Code Shape Length (m) Shape Area (m) Percentage (%)
Less Suitable Area 247467.3 70001273.76 19.48
Barely Suitable Area 2013.4 51388.79 0.01
Low Suitable Area 73831.34 4989984.6 1.39
Slightly Suitable Area 346578.6 40757424.97 11.34
Moderately Suitable Area 689744.1 94687101.92 26.35
Suitable Area 637415.9 133185275.5 37.06
Highly Suitable Area 191420.3 15674216.92 4.36
Total 359346666.5 100
The limitations in this study is the unavailability of certain socio-economic factors which
include population data to allow for assessment of number of persons in each residence for further
considerations.
In the weighted overlay approach used, Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) was
considered, but the proposed weights of the pairwise analysis was not satisfactory, this propelled
the intuitive allocation of weight values during the utilization of the weighted overlay tool.