A Multicriteria Decision-Making Approach for Urban Water Features: Ecological Landscape Architecture Evaluation

Reyhaneh Hashemi Sigari and Thomas Panagopoulos ()
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Reyhaneh Hashemi Sigari: Department of Landscape Architecture, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran 1983969411, Iran
Thomas Panagopoulos: Research Centre of Tourism Sustainability and Well-Being, Campus de Gambelas, University of Algarve, 8005-139 Faro, Portugal

Land, 2024, vol. 13, issue 11, 1-20

Abstract: In recent decades, the issues of ecology and environmental sustainability have become a global concern in contemporary urban design. Among various urban elements, water features play a significant role in improving the ecological characteristics of their surrounding environment, especially in hot and arid areas. The aim of this study is to evaluate the ecological characteristics of urban water features comprehensively and quantitatively, which has been overlooked in previous studies, taking their physical characteristics into account. To this end, a multicriteria decision-making method, an analytic network process, was proposed to quantitatively evaluate the ecological characteristics of water features. In this approach, four ecological criteria—microclimate, biodiversity, greenery, and human wellbeing—and ten physical characteristics of water features were considered. Twenty-one experts were asked to complete a questionnaire for pairwise comparisons of all ecological criteria and the influence of physical characteristics. The results showed that vegetation and scale, with the relative influencing values of 0.255 and 0.188, respectively, were identified as the most decisive features influencing ecological criteria. Conversely, texture, with a value 0.023, had the least impact. Moreover, it was shown that water features have the greatest impact on the microclimate compared with other ecological criteria. The results were used to compare water features at the Koohsangi Transregional Park, located in a hot and arid city of Iran. The results of this study lead to a framework that can help urban designers integrate ecological criteria into water feature planning to enhance urban ecology and sustainability.

Keywords: ecological design; urban ecology; analytic network process; water fountain; water bodies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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