DAM SITE SELECTION USING GIS-BASED AHP-OWA APPROACH CASE STUDY: EL KEBIR SHEMALY RIVER, SYRIA

Dam site selection is not a new problem; the traditional methods for solving this problem are costly and time consuming. Nowadays, advancement in technologies allows us to utilize maximum resources at optimum cost. Geographic Information System (GIS) based multicriteria decision analysis approaches are the common methods used for solving this type of problem. In this research, to locate potential dam sites along El Kebir Shemaly River, the criteria of slope, soil, geology, landuse, rainfall, drainage network, distance from road, and distance from target area were developed and implemented. The approach is based on the extension of Analytical Hierarchy Process using fuzzy quantifiers guided by Ordered Weighted Averaging operators (GIS-based AHP-OWA). The outcomes indicate that the developed criteria were sensitive to physical, hydrological environmental and economical settings on the study area. Furthermore, by changing the linguistic quantifiers, the GIS-based AHP–OWA can generate a wide range of decision strategies.