Classifying Sustainability of Mashhad Urban Regions to Environmental Hazards Using SIMUS Linear Programming

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

• Adel Sepehr ¹
• Rahil Kavian ²

¹ Ferdowsi University of Mashhad

² University of Birjand

10.22067/geo.v3i1.27975

Abstract

1. Introduction
Urban development on vulnerable areas is main problem in recent years due to catastrophic responses of geosystems such as fault activity, flood and many geomorphological hazards following equilibrium changes of geosystems. Mashhad, the second metropolitan of Iran, with population over 3 million, according to existence shrine of Emam Reza, welfare facilities and educational centers, have been caused high immigration in recent decades and over constructions in vulnerable areas.
Urban development on alluvial fans, faults lines, high risk of subsidence, also land use changes, water and air pollutions are main factors that intensify environmental hazards for this city.
Applying ranking and outranking methods, statistical algorithms, linear programming and multi-criteria decision making methods are some approaches for choosing criteria affecting urban development.
Linear programming is the process of taking various linear inequalities relating to some situation, and finding the "best" value obtainable under those conditions.
More formally, linear programming is a technique for the optimization of a linear objective function, subject to linear equality and linear inequality constraints. Its feasible region is a convex polyhedron, which is a set defined as the intersection of finitely many half spaces, each of which is defined by a linear inequality. Its objective function is a real-valued affine function defined on this polyhedron. A linear programming algorithm finds a point in the polyhedron where this function has the smallest (or largest) value if such a point exists.
In this study, the SIMUS methodology, Sequential Interactive Model for Urban Sustainability, was used for mapping environmental hazards. SIMUS develops a methodology to work with subjective criteria, something that is not allowed in the conventional LP method.
The main goal of this research is mapping environmental hazards susceptibility of urban region of Mashhad metropolitan based on linear programming algorithm and presenting sustainable strategies based on the susceptibility severity.
2- Study Area
Metropolis of Mashhad, the centre of Khorasan Razavi Province, with an area of 204 Km2 located in the North East of Iran, surrounded between mountain ranges of Binalud and Hezar Masjed. This city is second metropolitan of Iran, absorbed more than 30 million tourist per year, so has main social-economic role.
3- Material and Methods
In the first step, four geomorphological criteria including, flooding, fault, seismic risk, and liquefaction, also five environmental criteria including water pollution, air pollution, population density, land use alterations and informal settlements have been selected based on Delphi algorithm and expert’s opinions. In the next step, using SIMUS algorithm, was determined the sustain degree and susceptibility of urban regions to environmental hazards. SIMUS simultaneously considers both qualitative and quantitative values, with any number of thresholds, with lower and upper limits for each criterion, and with any number of alternatives and criteria, and can produce an objective ranking of alternatives. The objective function in the linear algorithm was considered maximum and thresholds selected by mean amount. Ultimately accordingly susceptibility degree, strategies of increasing green space, determining urban boundary, resisting building, combating land use changes, traffic control, immigration control were selected.
4-Results and discussion
simus considers simultaneously all the criteria, and recognizes the best combination of trade-offs between projects and criteria In other words, simus ranked the alternatives in accordance with their compliance with the objective, which is gauged by the criteria. The results show that urban region of 1, Samen and 9 gain maximum susceptibility to hazards. In front, the region of 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10 and 11 have minimum susceptibility degree. The plan of immigration control, resisting building, determining urban boundary and increasing green space should consider for sustainable development programs.
Also the results indicated that determining city border to urban development in safe areas is needed for second metropolitan of Iran, Mashhad. Attention to geomorphology concepts is fundamental element to build settlements.
5- Conclusion
Urban development must be planned base on land suitability and capability in each area. These indices determine environmental potential of an area to development programs and choosing best land use. Decision making and utility theory are methods to select regions for urban development.
SIMUS has the ability to select only one project among several, which is then the optimum, or can also make a ranking of projects. According to the SIMUS results and susceptibility map of urban areas to the environmental hazards, the urban management of the region 1, 9 and Samen are important, also land use management and immigration control plans have high preference in urban management of Mashhad.

Keywords

• SIMUS
• Environmental hazards
• susceptibility
• Sustainability
• Mashhad

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