Application of AHP for Environmental Suitability Analysis of Resettlement Site Selection: Chawaka District, Western Ethiopia

Abstract

The most essential issue in a resettlement process is the selection of a most appropriate site that offers best of the features required for people to lead a reasonably satisfactory life. A relocation site, therefore, must be very carefully selected considering a plethora of environmental parameters, both of bio-physical and socio-economic nature as a good combination of these attributes ultimately govern the quality of life of the people going to be resettled. In order to evaluate this suitability, state-of-the-art RS and GIS techniques in combination with MCA tool were made use of in the present study in Chawaka of Western Oromia in Ethiopia. The ultimate outcome indicated that weather, soil, land-use/ land-cover and topography attributes of the site occupied the first four ranks in that order followed by infrastructure, proximity to towns, population density and health aspects from fifth to eighth ranks in that order. Suitability analysis based on these rankings revealed that 2.02% (12.68 km2) of the Chawaka region as such is highly suitable for resettlement purpose, followed by 65.66% (412.20 km2) area as moderately suitable and 32.3% (202.12 km2) area as marginally suitable. Since moderately suitable area is sufficiently vast, the same can be chosen for promoting resettlement provided the drawbacks of health and proximity to towns are overcome by improving infrastructural facilities and road network to ensure a comfortable living to the resettlers.