Least-Cost Pipeline using Geographic Information System

Abstract

Increasing demand for water in Wapuli and its environ led to a proposal to construct a pipeline to link the town to an existing water plant. This paper developed a geospatial model incorporating multi-criteria analysis involving technical factors such as slope, landcover, watercourses, distance to roads and soil types to determine a least-cost path for the pipeline. However, the first least-cost path passes through a tiny sacred grove near Moadani dam, necessitating the generation of a second least-cost path by considering sacred groves as constraint. The result showed that the least-cost path avoided steep slopes, and runs through relatively levelled grounds. This analysis showed the importance of cultural factors in route planning. It is recommended that in route planning attention be given to cultural factors much in the same way as the technical factors.

Geospatial analysis of landfill site selection perspectives using geographic information systems in Bongo district, Ghana

“…Thus, it will be in order to infer that the indigenes in the district are more environmentally friendly and protective of the environment than the technocrats. However, as has been concluded by other studies [7,16,28,29], the protection of the forest and groves may not be purely due to the ecological purposes, but the belief that those areas are the abode of the gods and the ancestral spirits. There is also an argument that the rationale of this belief system is merely the traditional way of protecting the ecosystem.…”

“…This is not surprising, as these technocrats more or less passed through the same educational system grounded in western values and belief systems that often see indigenous belief systems and practices including the sacred groves as primitive and unscientific and not worth exploring or recognition. In many occasions, such sociocultural and religious values are seen as an obstacle to modernity that must be eliminated [7,27,28]. On the contrary, a study has revealed that indigenes were more willing to have a landfill located closer to watercourses and houses than to the sacred groves since they believe those are the abode of their gods [7].…”

“…where SI represents the suitability index, w i represents the weight of criterion i, and x i represents the standardised score from 0 to 9 of criterion i. The suitability index generated ranged from 0 to 7 due to the trade-off of factors-a feature that makes the weighted overlay tool powerful for suitability analysis [19,20]. The isolated suitable areas less than 9 hectares (90,000 m 2 ) continuous pixels were eliminated using Region group, Set Null and Nibble tools since these are below the minimum threshold landmass for a landfill in the area.…”

Optimal Routing of Wide Multi-Modal Energy and Infrastructure Corridors

“…Cost raster data and GIS are widely used to find LCPs for linear infrastructure such as roads [7][8][9], railways [10][11][12], power transmission lines [13,14], pipelines [15,16], and siting wildlife corridors [17,18]. Each transportation mode's important criteria and ranking is different.…”

Suitability Evaluation of Urban Construction Land Based on an Approach of Vertical-Horizontal Processes

“…which is a modification of the model provided by Knaapen et al [45] and is a least-cost model [49,61,62] that represents the cost of an object moving through landscapes of different resistances from a "source" [63]. This method is commonly used in GIS for measuring accessibility [47,64].…”