Integration of GIS and AHP Techniques for Analyzing Land Use Suitability in Di Linh District, Upstream Dong Nai Watershed, Vietnam

Land use suitability analysis requires consideration of various criteria, including not only the natural capacity of a land unit but also the implications of the socioeconomic and environmental variables. While the Geographic Information System (GIS) has been a powerful tool to handle spatial data in land use analysis, application of this tool alone could not overcome the issue of inconsistency in expert opinion when judging and assigning relative importance to each of the many criteria considered in a suitability analysis. To address this issue, this study used the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) in combination with GIS. This research shows how the integrated GIS-AHP effectively handled the land use suitability analysis for Di Linh district, Lam Dong province in Vietnam, which considered five criteria simultaneously.

In the overall result, the higher the suitability index value is, the higher the land suitability for the specified land use type. The process is done in Arcview GIS through the composite map of land mapping units. The composite map has two components, namely: the spatial component used to show locations and shapes of land mapping units; and the attribute component represented as a table used to input and store scores of the criteria. The Arcview GIS function is used to perform the calculations based on the above equation as well as scores and weights of criteria. The calculated suitability index is stored in one column. Integrating both the spatial component and suitability index produces a continuous suitability