Abstract
In this study, the weights of a number of criteria that affect the selection of the railway track between Mosul and Fishkhabur on the Iraqi- Syrian- Turkish border are determined. These criteria include ground slope, water resources, irrigation canals, infrastructure services routes, land use, environmental impact, and soil bearing strength. A questionnaire is conducted for a group of decision makers, specialists and planners. The Analytic Hierarchical Process (AHP) technology developed by Saaty is implemented by using pairwise comparison among the criteria. This method is chosen due to its ease, accuracy and the existence of a specialized computer program to perform the mathematical calculations, incorporating weights for all forms, and extracting the final weight for choosing the path. The study shows that the water resources criterion of (29.7%) at a consensus rate of (57%) gets the highest relative importance followed by the ground slope criterion (21.3%) at a consensus of (49%). The environmental impact criterion of (6.9%) at a consensus rate of (53%) gets the lowest value of the relative importance.
