Development of multicriteria modules for environmental valu- ation in GRASS GIS

Abstract

Dealing with spatial decision problems means very often to face a GIS and a multi-criteria decision analysis based problem at the same time. GIS and Multi-criteria Decision Analysis are two well defined research areas, but both can benefit one from each other. In the last twenty years several researches have paid attention to MCDA-GIS integration and to the development of Spatial Decision Support Systems (SDSS), but few papers presented examples of perfect integration. Also in case of perfect integration, they often integrate within GIS only one multicriteria model. Our application is a better contribution in this way. We developed four GRASS modules that permit to implement four different MCDA methods: the Regime, the FUZZY, the ELECTRE and the Dominance-based Rough Set Approach. One of the main advantages of our application over the previous ones is the possibility of a future development in an open-source context. The paper presents an application of the Regime, Electre and Fuzzy modules.