Fuzzy Modeling Approach for Designing Urban Land Grading System by Using Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems, the Case of Weldiya, Northen Ethiopia
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Date
2014-06-05
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Land grade has a crucial role to develop appropriate standard benchmark prices on the
lease of land and for the valuation of land related property. It also brings transparent and
clear taxation systems that could establish sound and efficient land marketing system that
would facilitate investment. However, the existing land grade system of the urban centers
of Ethiopia such as Woldiya town has not been very successful in allowing the town to
benefit from the advantages of having an efficient land grading system. The major
reasons behind the limitations emanate from two main factors. The first reason is related
to that important factors have not been exhaustively considered in designing urban land
grading system. The second problem is related to a methodological approach on how land
grade is prepared and implemented. Moreover, despite the fact that many geographical
phenomena like land grade have fuzzy characteristics, currently most of the geographic
phenomena are represented by crisp. Hence, the intent of this study is to develop
conceptual fuzzy land grade model that is helpful to bring flexible land grading that
enables to give decision makers an informed decision. In any of these methods, factor
identification, weighting and integrating GIS and fuzzy logic approaches are important
prerequisites that serve as platform to develop land grading. To design the conceptual
model, five main factors have been considered, namely infrastructure, land use,
topographic characteristics, visual and environmental factors and population density.
Twenty four criteria were also considered under each main factor. In this study different
data sources are utilized namely, Quick Bird image (2009) master plan of 1995 and 2009.
The study confirmed that among the identified factors infrastructure takes the major share
with 51% weighting influence and land use is in second position with weight influence
25.6 %. Topography, environmental and visual quality and population density factors
have weight influences of 12.6%, 6.9% and 3.9 % respectively. This study used FAHP to
determine criteria weights. The fuzzy consistency ratio (FCR) result was obtained to be
0.06. Based on the research findings, the most valuable land is situated in the old section
of the town (CBD) where comprehensive infrastructure has been developed. The fuzzy
analysis indicates that there is a gradual change in urban land grading pattern. This
indicates that flexibility is another characteristic of fuzzy logic application. The final out
put map indicates grade one, grade two and grade three have positively increased by
5.37%, 4.28% and 2.85%, respectively as compared to the existing land grading. This
situation is happened due to infrastructure development and expansion of the town. To
sum up, this paper indicates that the fuzzy modeling approach can avoid the loss of
information that often arises when the strict Boolean logic is used on the basis of the crisp
sets (Yes/No) and can produced a better and more reasonable result than crisp. It is also
concluded that FAHP is the best alternative to determine the criteria weights from
judgments of decision-making domain of experts.
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Keywords
Fuzzy, Crisp, Land Grade, Master Plan, Urban Planning