Spatial modeling for selecting industrial service sites in the greater city of Mosul

The interest in the issue of choosing the right industrial site within the urban environment of the city has increased because industry is a fundamental pillar of economic and social progress and achieving individual well-being. Inappropriate choice is one of the things that cannot be avoided because it can lead to significant economic losses. Industrial areas are a type of regional patterns of industry as they aim to organize urban land uses so that industrial areas do not burden other land uses, and to relieve pressure on the central area and crowded areas. Due to the expansion of land uses, especially residential ones, due to the increase in population numbers, these uses have witnessed overlap with each other, especially industrial uses with other uses, and this calls for searching for sites outside the central area.

Given the great importance of the industrial site in the institution or project, it has received great attention from industrial planning in determining and selecting it, through conducting a careful study of the technical and economic feasibility of the proposed alternatives and selecting the best of them. The decision to select an industrial site is also one of the important, difficult and strategic decisions facing industrial companies due to the huge volume of financial investments employed and the high costs involved. Considering that the decision to select the optimal industrial site is a long-term strategic decision, it affects the future of the company and determines the possibility of its success or failure.

Choosing an industrial site to establish a service industries site within the Greater Mosul City (i.e. after the expansion) is an important topic, because geographical knowledge provides awareness and understanding of the various spatial relationships of geographical phenomena through what it provides to read the philosophy of the place from the practical and theoretical point of view, and it is necessary to choose the most appropriate and realistic solutions for the purpose of reducing the gaps based on contemporary technical methods that are consistent with the research methodology by working to employ the capabilities of (GIS) programs for the purpose of achieving the required goals through the use of spatial analysis tools that are available within the geographic information systems environment by building a spatial suitability model (Suitabilit Model) in order to choose the best places to select industrial service sites, as the study dealt with analyzing the factors affecting the choice of the site of the industrial service area for the Greater Mosul City in its natural and human types, considering them the geographical components of the study area and the basis for spatial development in it.

Spatial modeling was used as a scientific and globally followed method in the fields of geography, engineering, development and planning to find the appropriate environment for the activity, whether it is industrial, agricultural or residential in a specific geographical area. The study worked to find the best spatial suitability sites to choose sites for the proposed industries using the multi-criteria decision method (MCDM) and the analytical hierarchy methodology (AHP).

The suitability analysis process was developed by landscape scientists first, and then the foundations for determining the location were formulated by Waldo Tobler and developed significantly after that in the environment of geographic information systems, using mathematical sciences (operations research) and spatial sciences as basic tools that lead to achieving more accurate results according to spatial suitability and according to the standards and considerations for the layers and according to the importance of each factor. The study produced five levels of suitability starting with a degree of (1.21% very low) because they are crowded residential areas and reached a degree of (low at 8.98%) as commercial areas and recorded medium suitability at a rate of (32.32%) because they are semi-empty areas. Among other uses, high suitability accounted for the highest percentage, which is (50.65%). It is suitable because it is outside the city and outside the residential areas, and finally, it has a very high percentage, which is (6.93%).