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Environmental consideration in railway route selection with GIS - Case study: Rasht-Anzali railway in Iran
2.5. Comparison of routes and optimal route selection
After automatic designation of routes in GIS, each route must be evaluated in respect to environmental considerations. This lets us to choose a route, which has minimal environmental impacts. In this study, Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was applied for choosing optimal alternative. Using this method conventionally designed routes and those determined by automatic method in GIS were compared and optimal route was chosen.
3. Results and conclutions
The purpose of this study was to develop a tool to locate a suitable railway route between Rasht and Anzaly cities in Gilan province. The GIS approach using environmental parameters and least cost pathway analysis proved to be successful in achieving this goal. Using a GIS approach was very important in this study. GIS tools allow incorporation of digital data layers of various different scales. In this research railway routes that resulted from traditional method were compared with GIS method. Results indicate the routes that were designed with applying GIS method are more environmentally sound than traditional one. According to the results of this investigation, applying GIS technology and inclusion of environmental expert’s views are recommended to minimize environmental liabilities. The approach developed in this study is very general and it is recommended to use it as a guide for future studies.
4. References
- Eastman R. J. 1995, Idrisi for windows (Version 2) User Guide, Clark University
- Fedlman S. C. 1995, A prototype for pipeline routing using remotely sensed data and geographic information system
- Jacobs and Voung, 2001, Routing a High Speed Railway: A GIS Approach.
http://www.uoguelph.ca/geography/filetran/geog-4480_2001/group1/index.htm
- Malcswzki J. 1999, GIS and Multicriteria Decision Analysis, John Wily & Sons, Inc, 392p.
- Saaty T. L.1980, The Analytical Hierarchy Process, Planning, Priority, Resource Allocation, Rws pub, USA
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