Selection of Suitable Sites for Underground Dams Using a Multi Criteria Decision Making with an Emphasis to Water Resources (Case Study: the West Tehran Province)

Construction of underground dams in mountainous stream is an appropriate solution for water resources development and provision. The aim of this study is to select suitable sites for underground dams in the West Tehran Province. The integrated system of a multi- criteria decision making (MCDM) by use of geographic information system (GIS) in the form of measured spatial decision support system (SDSS) was used for this study. Based on these criteria, with the help of the analtical hierarchical process(AHP) method, the land surface divided into smaller components. The criteria in each component (level) were prioritized using paired comparison method. Layers of information needed to prepare the weight of each factors were calculated in the GIS environment.Then, by use of SMCE Module in ILWIS 3.6 software, the decision tree employed and finally based on mentioned criteria, prioritization has been performed. Results show that water criterion in comparison to other criteria is the most important one.