Using Geographic Information System (GIS) as a Supporting Tool in Public Facilities Planning: A Case Study on the City of Nasiriyah

The accessibility and development of new park facilities is an important aspect of city planning. Nasiriyah (Iraq) is a city that is in dire need of park facilities. Thus, this study aims to examine the availability of the land and select the optimum locations for public parks in the city. To achieve this, first, the existing public parks are investigated using carried out within the framework of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) by integrating with Geographic Information System (GIS). Then, a Euclidean-allocation model was used to provide a useful tool for the allocation of public facilities and to measure the accessibility for the best locations of parks. Using a decision support system software with weighting three attributes of land availability, land value, and population density. The final results identified 6 potential sites which represent only 2.1% of the total area as the most suitable land for parks.