Identifying the Sustainable Development Corridor of Sanandaj Using a Scenario-Based GIS–MCDA–Fuzzy and OWA Approach

The global acceleration of urbanization in mountainous cities, together with the shortage of low-slope land, has intensified the phenomenon of “slope creep” and settlement in high-risk zones. Due to its valley morphology, steep slopes, and active fault zones, the city of Sanandaj is a prominent example of such conditions. This study aims to present an integrated framework for identifying the directions of Sanandaj’s future development in a way that simultaneously considers geomorphological safety, physical efficiency, and spatial justice.

In this framework, hard constraints—including the permissible slope threshold, buffer zones of active faults, riverbeds and river buffers, and selected safety buffers around hazardous facilities—were first applied as binary masks in a GIS environment in order to eliminate unsafe cells before any scoring process. Then, natural, environmental, accessibility, safety, and socio-physical criteria were standardized using appropriate fuzzy membership functions, and their relative weights were determined through group AHP. Weighted Linear Combination (WLC) was implemented as a fully compensatory reference scenario, while several Ordered Weighted Averaging (OWA) scenarios with different α values were applied to represent varying levels of risk tolerance. Suitability maps were then produced in five classes.

The results showed that the share of “very suitable” lands decreased from approximately 62.8% in the highly optimistic scenario (α = 0.5) to 10.5% in the highly cautious scenario (α = 5). This indicates that OWA effectively moderates the inherent optimism of WLC. A radial analysis of the spatial pattern of very suitable zones showed that, across all scenarios, the northeast–east–northwest corridor consistently emerges as the “sustainable development corridor” of Sanandaj. In contrast, the southern and southwestern directions are highly sensitive to the level of risk, and with even a slight increase in strictness, they are removed from the set of top-priority zones.

Overall, the proposed GIS–MCDA–Fuzzy–OWA framework, by practically integrating hard constraints into the core of the model, provides a scenario-based tool for guiding the development of Sanandaj toward safer, more efficient, and more equitable directions.depth of shallow cores (without undermining permeability), becomes a key objective.