Model for Industrial Site Selection towards a More Sustainable Dammam Metropolitan Area: Experts-Based Analytic Hierarchy Process

Industrial site selection is the process of choosing the most suitable location(s) that meets the desired requirements set by the selection criteria. Siting an industry is a major long-term investment. In this sense, selection of the most suitable location is imperative in satisfying the social, economic, environmental, and sustainability requirements. Identifying the most suitable site(s) with desired requirements defined by the selection criteria is basically one of the key objectives of industrial site selection. The majority of the data used by managers and decision makers in industrial site selection are geographically related, which denotes the industrial site selection process to be a spatial decision issue. Therefore, this study employed Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) model to evaluate the location suitability of the existing industries Dammam Metropolitan Area (DMA) based on a number of decision criteria used in selecting the most suitable industrial sites. Priority weights were calculated after ranking each criterion using the Saaty’s 9 point scale of preference by the experts. Weights were calculated and further normalized through the AHP. The findings of the survey have been used to evaluate the existing and approved industrial sites in DMA. The study have reached an important conclusion and recommendations with regards to the existing and approved industrial sites in DMA.