Investigation of the usability of the ahy method in route selection of highways

The technological infrastructure and the developing socio-economic structure in our country in recent years have significantly increased human mobility. Transport facilities have been developed in order to solve this human mobility in the fastest and safest way. As transportation possibilities, the highway provides us a lot of convenience. Highways built in recent years have caused controversy due to reasons such as destruction of agricultural lands and damage to forest areas. In order to avoid these discussions, the importance of the correct planning of the highway has increased. Highway planning is a complex and difficult process as it depends on so many criteria. For this reason, multi-criteria decision making techniques in the planning phase will facilitate this process. Multi criteria decision making methods are widely used today to solve problems involving more than one uncertainty and criteria. When these problems involve spatial data, geographic information systems supported solution possibilities increase the accuracy and speed of the decision process. Analytical hierarchy method (AHY), one of the multiple criteria decision making techniques, is one of the most used methods in solving these problems. In this study, 2 main groups were determined for the highway route that will pass through a region and this main group was divided into 7 criteria and subclasses of these 7 criteria were created. The criteria determined using AHY were compared in pairs and weight values were assigned to each criterion. Then, the effect weight calculation was made for each criterion. The results were examined on these weights and a suitability map was created with ArgGIS 10.2 software. The analytical hierarchy method in highway route selection is intended to enable users to develop effective solutions.