Suitability Analysis for Determining Potential Agricultural Land Use by the Multi-Criteria Decision Making Models SAW and VIKOR-AHP (Case study: Takestan-Qazvin Plain)

Abstract

Suitability analysis is a prerequisite for sustainable agricultural production and it involves evaluation of the environmental parameters. The development and creation of appropriate points for this land use without considering environmental capability will result in the appearance of several ecological, economic, and social problems. The MultiCriteria Decision Making (MCDM) Models were used for solving such problems. Takestan-Qazvin region is one of the biomes that have difficulties due to lack of a systematic administration on environmental resources. This research was done in the framework of the ecological model and by using multicriteria decision making methods such as Analytic Network Process (ANP), Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) and Vlse Kriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje - Analytical Hierarchy Process (VIKOR-AHP)in GIS environment with the aim of choosing the suitable locations for agricultural land use in Takestan-Qazvin Plain. However, the purpose of this study was twofold: first, it was aimed at determining the ecological capability of agricultural land use by using ANP and SAW methods. Second, the suitable agricultural alternatives in this region were ranked using the integrated VIKOR and AHP models. In these methods, the ratings and the weights of the criteria are known precisely. Ecological factors such as physical and biological parameters and economic - social factors were chosen as the major criteria affecting the agriculture land use. The research indicated that north parts of the study area were not suitable for agricultural development. Finally, the conclusion showed that the application of decision making models could be useful in environmental capacity evaluation of agricultural land use. Keywords: Analytic network process, Ecological evaluation, Environmental criteria, GIS, Simple additive weighting method