Car wash is defined as a facility used to clean the exterior [1]. Internationally, there is a great intention about the urban utilities mainly where these can be located. The utilities and services of car washing in urban centers should be located away from residents. Car wash selection is of a special type from an environmental point of view. Car wash issue introduces in many related topics concern car wash types, car wash and location, car ash and income, car wash characterization, car wash modernization, car wash system market, car wash industry, car wash plans car wash accessibility and car wash self-service and many others. The visibility of the car wash centers to be higher efficiency should not establish randomly, instead, they must be followed standards that offer appropriate location suitability. The pre-construction procedures include the authorized assessment of the surrounding landscape and stating the environmental impact assessment for most adverse impacts expected in the future. An important point to be defined is that; the type of car wash used in this paper is not high-tech car wash type. There are two types of car wash in the study area; manual and machine washing services. The machine car washing characterizes by its building place that satisfied some official procedures. As far as the recent, modern car wash is concerned, there is a recognizable transformation in thinking about car wash equipment, investment, and impacts that will be expected.

Carwash service looks easy, but without environmental impact assessment, some environmental complications can occur after operation. Often society has been slow to recognize the link between individual behaviors and practices. One of these practices is residential car washing [2]. The car wash service can operate safely if it locates at a proper place. The proper place is that considers all key criteria for establishing such utility. Generated wastewater may contain specific pollutants (metals, detergents, hydrocarbons, etc.) that disturb the quality of surroundings. As the home car washing was declined in the developed countries [3], the vehicle noise and movement must not interfere with family housing, hospitals, schools and other installation activities. The night lighting at the facility as recommended, must not disturb the surrounding area [4], and Discharge Standard Approach was effectively enforced in industries including car wash effluents discharged from vehicle wash facilities [5]. Suitability modeling and site selection are the most important guidelines in justifying spatial optimal solutions. The optimum car wash site selection will definitely be cost-saving on capital strategy and operators. Based on the historical strategic plan formulated for different facilities, the authority of Khartoum city is faced with a real problem concerns new car wash establishment. Finding suitable and appropriate space for the construction of a new facility is not easy; instead rezoning the residential plot is an unsuitable solution. Evaluating existing car wash centers based on standard criteria gives good views about the current conditions that do not appear in optimal suitability.

The size of the car wash center is not the same; it differs based on the rezoned space. The average area is range from 50 - 75 m² and has a rectangular shape in most cases. The significant observation during the field survey over the city’s main streets is the cheap hand car washing that has grown up on main streets, parks, and institutions, often practice by uneducated younger. The hand car washers have no authorized permission to practice this service in open spaces and streets and highly compete with the car washing authorized stations. As far as car washing customer’s attitudes are concerned and based on observation and citizens’ interviews, approximately about 70% are washing their cars at home and/or street in Khartoum City.

In planning for car washing center location, the critical prerequisite that should be included besides the site suitability modeling is the environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA). This will be strengthening the final decision about where to locate proper car wash centers of less adverse impact.

The progressive intention about car washing worldwide expanded through the collaboration of the International Car washing Association [6]. It reflects that washing a vehicle is a universal activity. Companies and private business sector are interesting in establishing guidelines for their car wash activities. The hand car washing that is being practiced on the side of the road, petrol stations, disused forecourts, former public car parks, and in supermarket car parking yards [7]. Car washing emerged also as a degree in business management about business plan for xyz hand car wash in Filind [8]. One of the innovative challenges in the area of car wash safety is the Clewer initiative and the Santa Maeta Group. The initiative is to quantify via application the protected workers in the sector of the hand car washes [9]. With the emergence of COVI-19, some recent studies showed new standards for responsibility of car washed in cities. The minimum sector specific COVID-19 workplace safety standards identified are: Distancing protocol, Hygiene protocols, and staffing [10].

Many researchers have studied the issue of car wash impacts upon the environment. They focused on the effluent and run-off from vehicle washing and cleaning activities that can damage the environment and contaminate the surroundings [11] [12] [13] [14] [15]. Also, the critical issue studied intensively is the wastewater generated by washing car including contaminants that are highly identified as the car wash environmental impacts, which may affect the surroundings [16] [17] [18] [19]. The International Car Wash Association (ICA) identified water reclamation in professional car washes as a critical concept since the 1990s. Reclamation is one conservation tool available to performed car wash operators. In the area of car wash criteria, there are many institutional projects about central vehicle wash facilities manual that aimed to provide a comprehensive reference source for planning and designing a central vehicle wash facility (CVWF), and decentralized, net zero wash facility [20]. Reclamation has attracted more attention in the past several years from regulators and manufacturers as a means of water conservation and quality control [21]. Paper concerns water saving in domestic car washing was published as the writers categorized the cars into five classes (small, medium, large, people carrier, and large 4 × 4) cars [22]. In 2018, the Home of Commons Environmental Audit Committee has finished the tenth report of series 2017-2019 about hand car washes. The report included many topics, such as the growth of hand car washes in the UK defined as unregulated business [23].

In recent urbanism perspectives, the planners and decision-makers ask a considerable question: where to locate a new car wash center that suits our environment and does not harm the social setup? Accepting this question, the problem is that car wash centers are the most important service activities in Khartoum Town increasing progressively in recent times, and the demand for more will be planned, but how will be located? Most of the current car wash centers seem to be lacking some sort of optimal locations criteria. So, in terms of geographical perspective, there is a problem that needs to be studied. In addition, the progressive increase of car populations has motivated new business investors to invest in the car washing services in Khartoum City. The site selection for this utility has been a challenging issue as no land can be specified for this kind of facility.

The most critical issue is the conflict between investors who owned a piece of land that did not suit the car wash business, and his insistence to have authorized permission to do that. Khartoum city land use planning is quite confused, and space adjustments are the problem of the study area. There is no master plan that identified free zoning for future expansion of specific land uses. Consequently, the city has an increasing daily car that needs some kind of car services. Where to locate the optimal car wash centers is the top of the recent urbanization issue in Khartoum. The hand car washers practice car washing everywhere in streets, surrounding institutions and at recreational areas.

Khartoum locality consists of 8 administrative units located at the confluence of the White Nile and the Blue Nile, between longitudes 32˚27'18'' - 32˚40'35'' degree East, and latitudes 15˚11'58'' and 15˚38'26'' degree North (Figure 1). Khartoum is a growing city that welcomes more daily thousands of new incomers. The car population also is progressively growing during the last 20 years, while related facilities such as car washing do not. There are 27 authorized car wash centers to serve more than 25.000 cars in Khartoum east administrative unit located with less accessible sites [24]. The majority of these centers have license without pre environmental impact assessment procedures. The sample streets selected for this study are traversed the area from south to north and some from east to west as shown in Table 1.

The main methodological plan for this paper concerns car wash suitability site selection is a GIS-based application. Figure 2 is a schematic diagram that presents systematically the key elements of the methodology that consists of the methods and procedures of data used as well as methods and procedures of data analysis. The schematic diagram also shows the post-analysis outputs and final interpretation in consequential order.

Source: Field survey (2020).

From the suitability map, a specific location to establish carwash centers is assigned for the functional needs based on the key factors used. Carwash centers rezoned location is the spatial problem we seek to analyze and assess its misleading management standard. Based on the goal of this paper, the researcher tried to achieve that the carwash centers’ location should be assessed with the orientation of the master plan and authority guidelines. This part includes three main analytical and discussion aspects.

The suitability site selections for car washing were assessed and weighted overlay using five selection criteria to realize a potential decision is recommended. Site suitability modeling provides an effective guideline to remark all sites with the regarded standards in finding the optimal locations. The space analysis indicated that the only option for installing car wash center is to rezone the already developed land-use patterns. So, the shifting from housing purpose to car wash service is the typical problem in the city of Khartoum. This can be evaluated as no qualified location identified based on the master plan over the Khartoum State. The size of the car wash center governs by the availability of the space and its land-use patterns surroundings. Rezoned space is not recommended for establishing car wash service as it will not satisfy the spatial requirements for all related operations that cope with the modern system requirements. In fact, the carwash site selection is a matter of integrated groups of criteria. Due to data limitations, this paper implemented some of the main criteria recommended for modeling carwash suitability. Therefore, the researcher may not fully use criteria to judge that the car wash suitability site is hundred percent proper. Thus, the new trend in the field of urban facilities is to use a method that has high spatial analysis capabilities, the most important and effective is the Geographic Information System (GIS). The researcher recommends that special attention should be focused on Khartoum’s urban services that are most considerable for its environment and modernization. Such attention presents toddy’s challenge in Khartoum’s urban environment, including car wash location, and all other public services.

The author declares no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.

Ibrahim, I.M.E. (2022) An Assessment of Authorized Car Wash Site Suitability Using a GIS-Based Modeling in Khartoum City, Sudan. Journal of Geographic Information System, 14, 134-152. https://doi.org/10.4236/jgis.2022.142008