develops a scientific decision-support process for housing development in Durban, South Africa
# Durban Housing Suitability Analysis
Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) for evaluating housing suitability in the Mzinyati Stream Catchment, eThekwini Municipality, South Africa.
## Overview
This project integrates spatial data across hazards, infrastructure, socioeconomic factors, environmental conditions, and community input to identify areas suitable for housing development. Weights are derived using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) with a fuzzy extension (Buckley's method).
**Notebooks:**
- `Durban_MCA.ipynb` — main analysis pipeline (data loading, factor scoring, AHP weighting, suitability mapping, at-risk building analysis)
- `Field_Map.ipynb` — generates a tablet-ready interactive HTML map from the MCA outputs
## Data Structure
Data files are not included in this repository (they must be obtained separately — see Data Sources below). Organise them as follows:
```
data/
├── reference/
│ ├── Major_Catchments_*.gpkg
│ ├── eThekwini_Municipal_Boundary_*.gpkg
│ ├── Urban_Development_Line_*.gpkg
│ ├── mzinyati_buildings.gpkg
│ └── Street_Address_*.gpkg
├── group_a_hazards/
│ ├── S30E030_FABDEM_V1-2.tif (DEM — used to derive slope)
│ ├── landslide_susceptibility.tif (pre-scored 1–5)
│ └── flood_extents.tif (pre-scored 1–5)
├── group_b_infrastructure/
│ ├── Roads_*.gpkg
│ ├── Fixed_Clinics_*.gpkg
│ ├── Mobile_Clinics_*.gpkg
│ ├── Hospitals_*.gpkg
│ ├── Fire_Stations_*.gpkg
│ ├── water_network.gpkg
│ └── electricity_network.gpkg
├── group_c_socioeconomic/
│ ├── settlements.gpkg
│ ├── investment_nodes.gpkg
│ └── transport_corridors.gpkg
├── group_d_community/
│ └── community_hazard_map.tif (pre-scored 1–5)
└── group_d_environmental/
├── DMOSS_2018_*.gpkg
├── Rivers_*.gpkg
└── wetlands.gpkg
```
## Running the Analysis
### Google Colab (recommended)
1. Open `Durban_MCA.ipynb` via the **Open in Colab** badge at the top of the notebook
2. Upload your data to Google Drive at `MyDrive/Durban/data/`
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