Using GIS and Python Language to Choose the Best School Location (Study on the Urban Areas of the Husseiniya District in Karbala Province)

Abstract

With the increments of the number of population nowadays, one of the most essential problems in urban areas is the number of students in each school which exceed the school capacity. Thus, it is important to increase the number of schools and to determine their suitable location. The aim of this study is to determine the most suitable sites for school by using Geographic Information System (GIS) in Husseiniya district, Karbala province, Iraq.  Land classification, land slope, path distance for normal schools ( 1000), represent the main criteria used to evaluate the location suitability and the most crowded school. Schools with high number of students are calculated and evaluated using Python program. The weighted overlay tool is also employed to weight the criteria. The results demonstrate that the developed GIS 10.2 by using Python program is successfully able to determine the best school location in Husseiniya district depending on the criteria with high efficiency. The excellent performance of the developed program shows its high efficiency for best locations detection in various applications such as hospitals and universities.