LAND USE COMPATIBILITY ASSESSMENT USING A MDIFIED TOPSIS MODEL: A CASE STUDY OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS IN TEHRAN

Abstract. Being one of the most controversial issues in urban planning, land use planning has always been in the focus of researches. Land use planning is a subdivision of urban planning which tends to arrange land uses in order to avoid conflicts among them. In order to achieve a transparent and effective urban planning, land uses should be located and allocated in an ideal situation so that avoid negative impacts from neighbouring parcels and land uses. Neighbouring land uses can produce externalities and negative impacts on other land uses because of inter-land use interaction. These externalities may be undesirable effects such as noise, air and visual pollution or may be caused by hazardous facilities. The main objective of this research is to propose a new multi-criteria evaluation model for land use compatibility assessment. Considering the fact that a considerable number of factors affect the compatibility degree of neighbouring land uses, a multi-criteria evaluation approach is employed to address the aforementioned problem. This research employs the integration of Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and Ordered Weighted Averaging (OWA) methods to facilitate land use compatibility evaluation with respect to optimism degree. The applicability of the proposed model is illustrated by the problem of land use compatibility assessment for elementary schools in Tehran. The results indicate that most of the current schools are situated in a location which is incompatible for the land use type of elementary school especially in the southern and central parts of the city.