Developing Conceptual Land Grade Model for Bench Mark Lease Price Determination using Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process and GIS Approach: A Case of Woldiya City, Ethiopia

Abstract

Land grading plays a crucial role to develop appropriate benchmark lease prices. An efficient land grading system brings transparent and clear land marketing system.  However, the existing land grading system of urban centers of Ethiopia has not been very successful in allowing the urban centers to benefit from the advantages of having an efficient land grading system. The major reasons for those limitations emanates from three main factors. The first reason is due to the fact that some major factors that have paramount importance for developing urban land grading had been left out. The second limitation is related to a methodological approach how land grade is prepared. In Ethiopia land grading is developed in the context of traditional urban land uses models. Yet, the notion of mono centric city concept (Burger’s 1925 model) is dominant. However, currently this model does not reasonably represent real land value patterns in urban Ethiopia. Thirdly, in Ethiopia, the conventional method used to prepare land grade map is manual and labor intensive due to this limitations most municipals are not in position to prepare predictable and flexible land grade map.Taking this gap into account, the objective of this research was to develop a predictable and flexible conceptual land grading model for improved land management system in urban areas. In this study three -stage methodologies were used. The first stage was focused in identifying influential factors that are used as input to develop conceptual land grading model. The second was about determining preference weight of criteria using FAHP method. The third method was aggregating the factor maps in arc GIS10.2 (map algebra) so as to create prototype land grading map. The developed conceptual model was found to be effective and has improved information gain compared to previous works. The study concluded that GIS  approach  is not only facilitate the organization and management of digital data layers but it also enable municipals to take full advantage of location information contained in databases that can support spatial decision  making in land grading. The study also confirmed that FAHP model allows decision makers to give interval judgments, which can capture a human‘s appraisal of ambiguity when complex multi-attribute decision making approaches like land grade are involved.

Keywords: Fuzzy; GIS; land grade; valuation; benchmark price.