Comparison of Cash Crop Suitability Assessment Using Parametric, AHP, and FAHP Methods

Rujee Rodcha, Nitin K. Tripathi and Rajendra Prasad Shrestha
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Rujee Rodcha: Remote Sensing and GIS field of study, School of Engineering and Technology, Asian Institute of Technology, P.O. Box 4, Klong Luang, Pathumthani 12120, Thailand
Nitin K. Tripathi: Remote Sensing and GIS field of study, School of Engineering and Technology, Asian Institute of Technology, P.O. Box 4, Klong Luang, Pathumthani 12120, Thailand
Rajendra Prasad Shrestha: Natural Resources Management field of study, School of Environment, Resources and Development, Asian Institute of Technology, P.O. Box 4, Klong Luang, Pathumthani 12120, Thailand

Land, 2019, vol. 8, issue 5, 1-22

Abstract: Cash crops, which include eucalyptus, play an important role in Thailand in wood utilization. Consequently, cash crops have become a significant driving force in land use changes and low crop yield; thus, the development of an accurate cash crop suitability model is needed. The aim of this study is to evaluate the land suitability of cash crops, such as eucalyptus, which is based on Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) in Nakhon Ratchasima Province in Thailand. Parametric, classical Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), and fuzzy AHP (FAHP) approaches integrated with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are compared to accomplish this. Parametric approaches equally allocate importance to all factors. AHP assigns the distribution of important factors using expert opinions. FAHP accounts for the uncertainty in expert opinions, and the triangular (Tri) and trapezoidal (Tra) approaches are compared. The results demonstrated that Trapezoidal Fuzzy AHP (TraFAHP) could classify and map cash crop suitability with 90.16% accuracy, which is a higher overall accuracy than the other approaches that are based on reference map validation. Therefore, we recommend the TraFAHP method for accurately identifying cash crop suitability.

Keywords: land suitability; Analytical Hierarchical Process; Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchical Process (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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