The Use of Vector-Based GIS and Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) for Siting Water Harvesting Dams in Karak Governorate/ South Jordan

Abstract

Jordan is the 4th poorest country in the world in terms of water resources. Although, Jordan receives an average annual rainfall of 8194 million cubic metre, it can only collect 360 million cubic meters in its existing dams. There is an urgent need to construct more dams in order to harvest the obtainable runoff which might help in overcoming the shortage in its water resources for domestic and agricultural uses.  Site selection of dams must be carried out using sophisticated tools and techniques. One of these techniques is GIS, which could be integrated with multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) to select the optimum sites for dams. In this research vector-Based GIS and multi-criteria decision making were used to select the optimum sites of dams in Karak governorate/ South Jordan. Rainfall, soil, slope, urban areas and roads comprise the selection criteria used in this research based on the use of weighted linear combination (WLC). Wadis, Roads, Urban Centres, Faults and Wells comprise the constraint factors used to erase the unsuitable areas for constructing dams based on the Boolean technique. The outcome of this research showed that there are 9 potential sites that could be utilized for constructing dams to harvest the surface water in the study area.

Keywords: Jordan; Karak; Dams; Vector-Based; GIS; MCDM