ENVIRONMENTAL LIVABILITY'S ASSESSMENT OF IRAQI GOVERNORATES USING A.H.P MODEL AND GEOGRAPHY INFORMATION SYSTEM (GIS)

Abstract

 Nowadays Iraq has encountered serious challenges, including war, terrorism, and economic crisis. This problem has seriously reduced the ability of this country to provide a decent life for its citizens and this perfectly highlights the necessity of various aspects of livability. Based on this view, in this research environmental livability is assessed as one of the important aspects of livability. With this purpose in mind, in this paper A.H.P model was used to determine the relative importance of criteria and GIS was used to overlay the layer and to create the environmental livability map. The methodology used in this research is descriptive, comparative, analytical, and field work as well as a questionnaire, and the data used in this research are taken from the statistical book published under the title of Iraqi Household Socio–Economic Survey (IHSES) in 2012. Sample size is 25,488 households. The criteria used are the percentage of households of Iraqi governorates that are affected and are close to the following conditions: 1- smoke and gases, 2- dust, 3- bad odor, 4- noise, 5- garbage and dirt, and 6- stagnant water. The final map classifies the governorates into five classes in terms of livability (relatively unsuitable, unsuitable, strongly unsuitable, very strongly unsuitable, and extremely unsuitable). Achieved weight of A.H.P model shows that garbage and dirt (0.249) and stagnant water (0.221) are the most important criteria. Results obtained from the final maps show the households of Nineveh, Al-Qadisiyah, and Missan governorates to have the worst condition in terms of environmental livability.