Rural development decision support using the Analytic Hierarchy Process

This paper presents a decision model based upon community preferences to hierachise activities that support the development of a rural area in Chile. Local government of the region has tried to stimulate economic development for many years without success. The goals surrounding incentive programs offered are complex and conflicting. Often inconsistencies exist between community preferences, incentive programs, and stated goal. Measuring preferences is difficult and represents a form of multi-attribute decision-making. The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), developed by Thomas L. Saaty, allows designing a hierarchical structure and weighing the trade-offs between decision criteria and alternatives to facilitate prioritization of activities to carry out to attain the desired district growth.