Evaluation of freight villages: A GIS-based multi-criteria decision analysis

The development of freight villages in a given region is often viewed as a popular project in the development of a particular country's logistic plans. However, the evaluation of a freight village location among the various alternatives is a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problem including both quantitative and qualitative criteria. Obtaining relevant geographic data is another problem for the evaluation of freight village locations. In this study, a geographic information system (GIS)-based MCDM model is proposed to evaluate potential locations for freight villages. The proposed model consists of four sequential phases. In the first phase, different geographic criteria are determined from existing literature, and data are gathered using GIS. By criteria weights equally, alternative locations are determined through GIS in the second phase. In the third phase, identified criteria are weighted using analytical network process (ANP) method by various stakeholders of potential freight villages. In the fourth phase, the "Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS)" method is applied in order to determine the best alternative based on the weighted criteria. Using real data from the city of Ankara, Turkey, we test the applicability of our evaluation approach and compare the best alternative obtained by the proposed method with the current freight village (CFV) location in Ankara. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.