TY - JOUR
T1 - Choosing between alternative placement strategies for conservation buffers using Borda count
AU - Qiu, Zeyuan
AU - Dosskey, Michael G.
AU - Kang, Yang
N1 - Funding Information:
The funding support to this study was partially provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture , the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (grant number 2012-67019-19348 ), Natural Resources Conservation Service (grant number 692B26104 ), and Forest Service, Southern Research Station, National Agroforestry Center (grant number 09-DG-11330152-057 ) to New Jersey Institute of Technology. The authors are grateful to three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments in improving the overall quality of the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2016/9/1
Y1 - 2016/9/1
N2 - There is inherent ambiguity when comparing decision criteria in multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM). A fuzzy Borda count was developed to take into account some of the ambiguity and derive criteria weights by linguistically comparing decision criteria. This study extends the fuzzy Borda count to take into account agents' confidence in their preferences for criteria weights. The procedure is applied to prioritize agricultural lands for conservation buffer placement using multiple criteria in the Raritan River Basin in New Jersey. These criteria, which include soil erodibility, hydrological sensitivity, wildlife habitat, and impervious surface, capture the conservation buffers' ecosystem services in terms of reducing soil erosion, controlling runoff generation, enhancing wildlife habitat, and mitigating stormwater impacts, respectively. A survey was conducted of conservation professionals including federal employees at NRCS, state and local agencies and nongovernmental environmental organizations to elicit agents' preferences for multiple benefits of conservation buffers using a fuzzy pairwise comparison method. The study compares the fuzzy MCDM procedure to a class-based MCDM procedure for prioritizing agricultural lands for conservation buffer placement. The comparative results show that both procedures have their advantages and disadvantages, but generate comparable prioritization results. Further research is needed to improve the proposed fuzzy MCDM procedure to handle missing values in eliciting agents' preferences for comparing multiple criteria.
AB - There is inherent ambiguity when comparing decision criteria in multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM). A fuzzy Borda count was developed to take into account some of the ambiguity and derive criteria weights by linguistically comparing decision criteria. This study extends the fuzzy Borda count to take into account agents' confidence in their preferences for criteria weights. The procedure is applied to prioritize agricultural lands for conservation buffer placement using multiple criteria in the Raritan River Basin in New Jersey. These criteria, which include soil erodibility, hydrological sensitivity, wildlife habitat, and impervious surface, capture the conservation buffers' ecosystem services in terms of reducing soil erosion, controlling runoff generation, enhancing wildlife habitat, and mitigating stormwater impacts, respectively. A survey was conducted of conservation professionals including federal employees at NRCS, state and local agencies and nongovernmental environmental organizations to elicit agents' preferences for multiple benefits of conservation buffers using a fuzzy pairwise comparison method. The study compares the fuzzy MCDM procedure to a class-based MCDM procedure for prioritizing agricultural lands for conservation buffer placement. The comparative results show that both procedures have their advantages and disadvantages, but generate comparable prioritization results. Further research is needed to improve the proposed fuzzy MCDM procedure to handle missing values in eliciting agents' preferences for comparing multiple criteria.
KW - Analytic hierarchy process
KW - Borda count
KW - Conservation buffer placement
KW - Fuzzy logic
KW - Multi-criteria decision-making
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U2 - 10.1016/j.landurbplan.2016.03.012
DO - 10.1016/j.landurbplan.2016.03.012
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84966699852
SN - 0169-2046
VL - 153
SP - 66
EP - 73
JO - Landscape and Urban Planning
JF - Landscape and Urban Planning
ER -