Water Pipeline Routing Using GIS

Pipeline route selection problem through an area is one of the oldest spatial challenges because of various influencing factors such as topography, geographic, geophysical, earth’s surrounding and anthropological. It is a demanding issue which requires advanced scientific approaches to determine the shortest, most direct and cost-efficient route. This study identifies and evaluate various factors (elevation, slope, land use, rail and road network, water areas, etc.) influencing the pipeline route selection and develop a Geographical Information System (GIS)-based model to find the optimal pipeline route from Hanumangarh District to Jhunjhunu District using least cost approach. The proposed methodology involves calculation and unsupervised classification of the Euclidian distance for all factors. Classified rasters are then further reclassified and weights for different factors are provided using weighted overlay method to combine all the raster into a single raster image. Finally, the least cost path of the pipeline is determined using least cost tool of ArcGIS software. This research results provide a time-saving and efficient least cost path and proves the suitability of using ArcGIS in planning an optimal pipeline route.