Evaluation of the labour cities localtions using a GIS based on multi criteria in Kuwait

Abstract EN

Objectives: Labour cities is a term used to describe residential areas purposely constructed to host a large group of workers of a particular company or employed in a certain sector.

In Kuwait, six labour cities are proposed by the government to house the disproportionately large number of expatriate workers in the country.

This research evaluates the locations of these proposed labour cities.

Method: This study describes a framework based on GIS and MCDA that uses multiple population and spatial criteria to assign suitability scores to each of the proposed locations.

The criteria weights were derived from interviews with official stakeholders and geospatial data.

Separately, Raster data was used to validate the findings of the primary GIS/MCDA model of the study.

Results: It is found that the most suitable site is South Sabah Al Ahmed with a suitability score of 68%.

This was confirmed by raster suitability analysis.

Conclusion: The findings show that the capacity of the new labour cities is not high enough to significantly drive down population density, traffic congestion and pressure on infrastructure systems in Kuwait, but there are benefits for population in existing districts.