MULTI-CRITERIA DECISION ANALYSIS: A SPATIAL APPROACH FOR SUSTAINABLE URBAN TRANSPORT

Sustainable transportation policies depend on exploring the interaction between transport, land-use and their impacts on environment and joint decision making processes, where various stake-holders could contribute. Recently, this is frequently pronounced in urban areas. In order to enlighten this complex task, within this study, a frame-work is proposed that depends upon spatial multi-criteria decision making. The proposed concepts are applied and tested on a specific and articulated example as the Istanbul Metropolitan Area-Asian side. This area is selected as study area due to social, economic and environmental constraints that are highly pronounced recently. Since the interaction within the study area is not known, a methodology is proposed to analyze the spatial pattern of the interaction, trend and possible future impacts of transportation infrastructures. Within a selected band of along highway routes that are passing through the first, second and possible third bridge, the land-cover changes is analyzed before and after the construction via spatial information technologies. The linear regression model is applied for determining the future pattern along the possible third bridge route. By means of applying spatial multi-criteria analyses, a methodology for integrated decision making is provided. These concepts were tested and four alternatives are visualized for the study area. The designed and tested spatial multi-criteria decision making frame-work could be applied to other urban areas. The designed frame-work is an initial platform to support joint decision making process based on spatial information sciences and multi-criteria analyses. The developed concepts support joint, discussed, agreed and transparent decisions that sustainable policies depend upon.