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Faculty of Agriculture, University of Novi Sad , Novi Sad , Serbia
Faculty of Agriculture, University of Novi Sad , Novi Sad , Serbia
Faculty of Agriculture, University of Novi Sad , Novi Sad , Serbia
This paper presents methodology for defining spatial risk of land salinization in the Vojvodina Province (Serbia). Based on previous works and the available data, the group of agricultural experts identified 11 criteria that play an important role in land evaluation for salinization risk. The selected criteria are not sufficient on their own, because policy-makers need spatial information on where the most vulnerable land is located. This is analyzed by using a combination of the geographic information system (GIS) and multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) – a sub-discipline of operations research, which is used to support decision-making. MCDA is concerned with formally structuring and solving decision problems, typically involving the explicit weighting of criteria and the trade-offs between them to represent the preferences of the decision-makers. In this paper, the purpose of GIS is to represent all criteria as maps or raster layers with a set of geographically defined spatial units, while MCDA is used for defining weights of criteria. Then, land salinization risk map is developed by multiplying the cell values in each of the criteria’ layers by the corresponding weights of the criteria and then summarizing weighted cell values.
land salinization, geographic information system (GIS), multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA).
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