Least-Cost Pipeline using Geographic Information System: The Limit to Technicalities

Literature Review

Least-cost path is referred with different names; best path, shortest path, optimal path and cheapest path. In all its usages, it means the route with the lowest cost of construction after factoring all the necessary varying criteria which influence route construction and maintenance (Atkinson, Deadman, Dudycha, & Traynor, 2005; Choi, Park, Sunwoo, & Clarke, 2008; Ismail & Jusoff, 2009; Saha et al., 2005; Yu, Lee, & Munro-Stasiuk, 2003). The least-cost path analysis requires multi-criteria evaluation (MCA) to determine the relative importance or weights of multiple factors (Atkinson et al., 2005). Thus, least-cost path is generated from cost dataset or thematic cost surface. This is a raster map where value at each cell gives the estimated cost of passing through the pixel (Saha et al., 2005). The cost here represents the difficulty, resistance or friction in crossing the cell (Collischonn & Pilar, 2000). Thus, the thematic cost layer or cost dataset provides an estimate of the cost of route construction and maintenance over an area (Saha et al., 2005).