11. Case Study 3: Identification of Potential Sites for Housing Development Using GIS-Based Multi-criteria Evaluation Technique

Due to the tremendous pace of population growth, the population is now expanding rapidly even in the hilly areas. It is now critical for policymakers and other stakeholders to look for potential built-up places to address the looming challenge. The process of choosing a built-up location is a multi-attribute decision problem. In hilly terrain, several heterogeneous criteria such as slope, road proximity, land use, distance from developed land, landslide, lithology, drainage proximity, lineament and aspect all play a role in site selection. The use of quantitative methodologies like Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) techniques in land suitability procedures has expanded in the recent decade, allowing for the processing of diverse examined data. MCDM technique that was employed in this study to include uncertainties in decision-makers’ opinions is Analytical Hierarchy Process, (AHP). Slope was given highest preference for the selection of built-up sites in hilly areas, while lowest preference was given to distance from landslide and distance to lineament and aspect by the model. Result of model validation by using ROC curve reveals that AHP is able to delineate suitability class with 92% of accuracy. Final suitability map was prepared classifying it into 5 classes. The results indicate that the AHP indicates 4.32% as very less suitable, 15.15% as less suitable, 21.64% as high suitable and 31.50% as very high suitable. In conclusion, considering the rapid pace of urbanization, the possible built-up sites selection will lead to domino effect to secure holistic hill area development and planning.