GIS-BASED AHP-OWA APPROACH FOR LOCATING SUITABLE SITES FOR WATER HARVESTING DAM IN QASSIM REGION, SAUDI ARABIA

Selection of a water harvesting dam site involves a complex array of decision criteria that may have conflicting values. finding the optimum location requires integration of the capacities of geographic information systems (gis) and multi-criteria decision- making (mcdm). in this paper, a gis-based multi-criteria decision analysis approach is used to solve this problem. the approach is based on the extension of analytical hierarchy process using fuzzy quantifiers-guided ordered weighted averaging operators (gis-based ahp-owa). this approach is applied to determine the optimal site of a water harvest dam in qassim region, saudi arabia. several factors affect the selection of the best location of the target water harvesting dam such as: slope, landuse, soil type, geology, rainfall, drainage network, distance from the road, and distance from the cities, are used. the results showed that using a combination of gis-based ahp–owa is proper approach for optimal water harvesting site selection, where this approach provides a generic powerful decision-making tool that allows decision-makers to define a decision strategy on a continuum between pessimistic (risk-averse) and optimistic (risk-taking) strategies.