Survey of Using Multi-criteria Decision-making Methods and Multi-objective Optimization for Site Selection of Schools, Case Study: Region 17 of Tehran

The ever-increasing population leads to establishing new educational centers. One of the important stages in school establishing, is selecting the optimal locations for them according to different objectives and criteria. The objectives are defined to determine well-distributed schools with balanced capacity and minimize the incompatibility of land-uses in the area. Increasing the related factors and criteria makes the location-allocation problem more complicated. Therefore, it is necessary to use efficient methods to solve it. In this paper, GIS, Multi-criteria decision making methods and multi-objective evolutionary algorithm were used to location-allocation of multiple girls’ primary schools in region 17 of Tehran urban area. Equity in geographic access and balance of schools capacity were considered in optimization process. Furthermore, suitability of the selected sites was determined considering the distance from the compatible and incompatible land-uses of the area. Because of using a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm, multiple solutions are presented in results instead of only one solution. In this research, five solutions were selected and investigated. In the best solution according to the first objective function, although the suitability of sites is adequate, the capacities of schools are imbalanced. In the best solution according to the second objective function (equity in geographic access), the chosen sites are well-distributed, but the compatibility of the land-uses and suitability of the sites are not satisfactory. Similarly, in the best solution according to the third objective function (balance of schools capacity), compatibility of the land-uses and suitability of the sites are inappropriate. Anyway, decision-makers can compare different optimal solutions and choose one of them to implementation according to different relative importance of objective functions.