Comparison of parametric and fuzzy analytic hierarchy process in land evaluation (Case study: Varamin region)

In last decades, the skillful planning of land resources has become a major issue for rural development. The development of cultivated areas becomes gradually impossible due to ever increasing population growth and urban development. Fuzzy logic is preferred to Boolean logic for land evaluation, because fuzzy techniques lead to estimate for land use suitability on a continuous scale and can therefore, be more informative than the Boolean technique. The objective of this study is to apply fuzzy set methodology in the context of a decision making process known as the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to land evaluation for irrigated wheat. The results revealed that the results obtained with fuzzy AHP method are in better agreement (R2=0.911) with the observed yield as compared to those obtained with parametric method (R2=0.804). Although, the fuzzy AHP provided more efficient and accurate results than parametric method, the choice of membership functions, width of the transition zones and weight values are determinant to achieve its realistic results in land suitability assessment.