Analysis Of Suitable Site Selection For Primary School Using Geospatial Techniques: A Case Of Burayu Town

Abstract

Currently, the population growth rate of Burayu town increasing rapidly and this is an increase or expand the need for more infrastructures such as schools, which serve the community. Interestingly, the most important issue which needs unique consideration in the developing town is the selection of an appropriate site for town development or public service facilities. Schools are taken as among the most and basic infrastructural construction in urban and rural to provide educational service. However, currently, the location of the some existing school is not selected using scientific methods by considering the necessary site suitability standards. So that, finding a suitable site that meets the desired qualification is prepared by the selection criteria. Moreover, both methods, Geographical Information System (GIS) and Multi-Criteria Analysis System (MCA) are tools employed to solve such problems. Ten parameters are used for this study. These are land use, existing public primary schools, population density, main road, river, water pond, slope, proximity to emergence services, commercial and religions, industry, and factories are used. The individual thematic maps were produced separately for all parameters. The thematic maps of each parameter are overlaid through the help of AHP and GIS and used by the weighted overlay. Furthermore, according to the allowable standards, one school can serve a 15,000 population but the result indicates that when the distribution of public primary schools is compared with the current population of the town the proportion of the public primary school facility to the population of the town is about 1 to 34,122. This means, existing public primary schools are serving the total population while expected to serve 44 % of the whole population according to the standards. The suitability map of existing schools,34%,54% 18%,50% of kindergarten, public primary schools, private primary schools, and high schools of study area falls under unsuitable area. In detail public primary schools demonstrates that, from eleven public primary schools, six (54.5%) schools are located in the unsuitable area, and four (36.4%) schools are located in the appropriate or suitable location. The composite suitability map produced indicated that 529.50 ha (5.88%) of the total area is the most suitable area, 2150.15(23.90%) is suitable, 4262.30(23.90%) is less suitable and 2055.75(22.85%) is unsuitable. Therefore, the scientific methods of selecting a suitable site successfully developed for new schools to be built in the study area