To retire or expand? A fuzzy GIS-based spatial multi-criteria evaluation framework for irrigated agriculture
This paper presents a GIS framework for multi-criteria evaluation of land suitability for the expansion or retirement of irrigated cropland at a catchment scale in Australia. This framework is based on the fuzzy linguistic ordered weighted averaging (FLOWA) approach which integrates the analytical hierarchy procedure (AHP) and quantifier-guided OWA operators in an ArcGIS 9.2 environment. The FLOWA module proved to be highly flexible and efficient in generating and visualising a wide range of different multi-criteria decision strategies.