Multi-criteria Decision Analysis for Route Alignment Planning Using Geographical Information System (GIS) and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP)

Abstract

Analytical hierarchy process (AHP) typically involves pairwise comparisons to establish the relative importance of criteria and alternatives. This study can verify these comparisons through consistency checks to ensure that respondents provide reliable and consistent judgments. The proposed model is implemented to evaluate the optimum route alignment between two locations, for the outer area of Allahabad City, India. The optimal route obtained is the path with minimum cost in the alignment decision and it meets all the factors related to environmental, technical, social, and economic criteria. Four alternative route alignments arise. Based on multi-criteria evaluation, four alignments are compared and one of the optimal route alignments is selected. A multi-criteria evaluation is performed to compare the four routes’ alignment using AHP and surface cost analysis. The technical route alignment with the highest priority index of 0.297956 with a minimum cost of 4,619 units is finally considered as optimum route alignment.

Keywords

• Route alignment planning
• geographic information system
• analytic hierarchy process
• multi-criteria decision analysis
• decision support system