Adopting spatial analysis to choose suitable villages for rural development: Iraq / babylon governorate case study

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to establish criteria for selecting villages for rural development service centres by integrating statistical and tabulated data from one side with geodatabase for spatial analysis from the other. Thus, by using this to generate spatial indicators, the research would be able to create a holistic picture of the situation of all villages and to discover the real potential in them. The research methodology consisted of statistical data obtained by means of a data questionnaire for all villages and combined these statistical data with spatial data for the community of villages under review in order to produce a new generation of spatial information as indicators for decision-making. The results indicate the possibility of generalising the spatial analysis of geographic information systems as an effective basis in the studies of spatial planning at its various levels. Besides, the spatial analysis provides a real-time spatial predictor for rapid decision-making because it is based on a direct and periodic update of the spatial database.