Suitability analysis

Abstract: With growing interest in extending GIS to support multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods, enhancing GIS-based MCDM with sensitivity analysis (SA) procedures is crucial to understand the model behavior and its limitations. This paper presents a novel approach of examining multi-criteria weight sensitivity of a GIS-based MCDM model. It explores the dependency of model output on the weights of input parameters, identifying criteria that are especially sensitive to weight changes and to show the impacts of changing criteria weights on the model outcomes in spatial dimension. A methodology was developed to perform simulations where the weights associated with all criteria used for suitability modelling were varied one-at-a-time (OAT) to investigate their relative impacts on the final evaluation results. A tool which incorporates the OAT method with the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) within the ArcGIS environment was implemented. It permits a range of user defined simulations to be performed to quantitatively evaluate model dynamic changes, measures the stability of results with respect to the variation of different parameter weights, and displays spatial change dynamics. A case study of irrigated cropland suitability assessment addressing the application of the new GIS-based AHP-SA tool is described. It demonstrates that the tool is spatial, simple and flexible.

Abstract: Land-use planners often make complex decisions within a short period of time when they must take into account sustainable development and economic competitiveness. A set of land-use suitability maps would be very useful in this respect. Ideally, these maps should incorporate complex criteria integrating several stakeholders' points of view. To illustrate the feasibility of this approach, a land suitability map for housing was realised for a small region of Switzerland. Geographical Information System technology was used to assess the criteria requested to define the suitability of land for housing. An example dealing with the evaluation of noise levels illustrates the initial steps of this procedure. Because the required criteria are heterogeneous and measured on various scales, an outranking multicriteria analysis method called ELECTRE-TRI was used. However, using it to assess the suitability of any point in a territory was impractical due to computational limitations. Therefore, a mathematical function ...