Positioning Wood Industry Units in Khuzestan Province by sing analytic Network process (ANP) in GIS environment

Although industrial development has huge and undeniable impact on all aspects of the human life, but sometimes without use of purposeful and sustainable development-based approaches has led it to lack of continuity of sustainable development and environmental crises. The aim of this investigation is studying capabilities of Network Analytical Process method, as one of the newest approaches of multi-criteria decision making, in site selection of wood industry units in Khuzestan province relied on functional analysis of Geographic Information System. Uncertainty in site selection of our country wood industries has led to the emergence of undesirable problems such as; increasing of transportation cost and stop of production line. The nature of ANP approach has an acceptable potential in dealing with multiple criteria in choosing the best place site selection issues. In this study, based on expert opinions, various factors involved in locating wood industries were identified and entered into GIS environment after necessary reformations. Then, information layers, based on ANP method, were incorporated together to determine the appropriate weights and ranks for designing a map for spatial establishment of wood industries and products in Khuzestan province. Based on the resulting map, the best places for construction and development of wood industries consist of have taken about 8 percent of the province's area. This study has shown the capabilities and the results sensitivity analysis of the GIS and the multi-criteria decision-making of ANP approach for network dealing with spatial localization industries.