TY  - EJOU
AU  - Mendas, Abdelkader 
AU  - Mebrek, Abdellah 
AU  - Mekranfar, Zohra 

TI  - Group Decision-Making Based on GIS and MultiCriteria Analysis for Assessing Land Suitability for Agriculture
T2  - Revue Internationale de Géomatique

PY  - 2024
VL  - 33
IS  - 1
SN  - 2116-7060

AB  - The main purpose of this work is to propose a methodology that considers the multicriteria and multi-actor aspects for assessing land suitability for agriculture. This involves offering a group spatial decision-making approach. The members of a multidisciplinary team can decide on the relative importance of the criteria and the ranking of alternatives. Each member provides his judgment and contributes in a distinct and identifiable manner to find a compromise solution. Twelve criteria (easily available water reserve, cation exchange capacity, electric conductivity, potential of hydrogen (pH), drainage, permeability, active limestone, soil texture, soil useful depth, slopes, labor availability, and proximity to roads) grouped into four factors (agronomy, planning and socio-economy, land enhancement and improvement, conservation of soils and environmental protection) were selected in this study. The methodology consists of calculating the initial criteria weights using the AHP method. The final weights are obtained using the Consensual Convergence Model (CCM), and the decision-maker’s performance is aggregated using the ELECTRE Tri method. All the required processing methods were integrated into a GIS environment. The methodological developments were motivated by an application to the suitability of land for durum wheat cultivation in a study area in Mleta, Algeria, which is comprised of 74 land units. Every criterion was classified from the best to the poor based on its values and used for assessing land suitability for agriculture. The land units were assigned to different predefined classes. The final results are presented as a map produced according to the optimistic procedure of ELECTRE Tri. The greatest contribution of this research lies in integrating group decision-making in multicriteria spatial decisions, particularly the land suitability for agriculture, which has never been previously addressed. The consistency of the obtained map confirms the methods’ effectiveness.
KW  - Suitability of land for agriculture; group decision making; multicriteria decision making; GIS; consensus convergence model; GIS-MCDM-CCM integration

DO  - 10.32604/rig.2024.055321