GIS coupled multiple criteria decision making approach for classifying urban coastal areas in India

Coastal area classification in India is a challenge for decision makers due to unclear directions in implementation of coastal regulations and lack of scientific rational about existing classification methods. To improve the objectivity of the coastal area classification is the aim of the present work. A Geographical Information System (GIS) coupled Multi-criteria Decision Making (MCDM) approach is developed in this work to provide scientific rational for classifying coastal areas. Utility functions are used to transform the physical coastal features into quantitative membership values. Different weighting schemes for coastal features are applied to derive Coastal Area Index (CAI) which classifies the coastal areas in distinct categories. Mumbai, the coastal megacity of India, is used as case study for demonstration of proposed approach. Results of application of GIS-MCDM approach showed the clear demarcation of coastal areas based on CAI is possible which provides a better decision support for developmental and planning authorities to classify coastal areas. Finally, uncertainty analysis using Monte Carlo approach to validate the sensitivity of CAI under different scenarios was carried out.