Application of sustainable urban development in environmental suitability analysis of educational land use by using AHP and GIS in Tehran

Fulfilling present needs while reducing the impact of human activity is a challenge requiring new ideas. As there is shortage of suitable locations, financial resource limitations and limited using of information technology, it is seen an imbalance between request and services around education in Tehran. Educational land use faces with matters such as unsuitable site selection and imbalance distribution of places which makes problems in the way of sustainable urban development. This research focuses on environmental dimension of sustainable urban development and is going to do environmental suitability analysis of educational land use in Tehran by using AHP and GIS. Suitability analysis is a process of systematically identifying or rating potential locations with respect to a particular use. A number of locations for educational land use are founded in Tehran and some factors such as access range, slope, and compatibility are evaluated, then Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is applied to give weight to each indicator and by use of analytical functions of GIS for overlaying the indicators, it will be decided that which location is environmentally suitable for educational land use. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of APAAS