AbstractsBusiness Management & Administration

Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) for Agricultural Sustainability Assessment

by Byomkesh Talukder




Institution: Wilfrid Laurier University
Department:
Year: 2016
Keywords: Agricultural Sustainability; MCDA; Indicators; MAUT; PROMETHEE; Elimination; Assessment; Agriculture; Environmental Studies; Geography; Natural Resources Management and Policy; Sustainability
Posted: 02/05/2017
Record ID: 2130401
Full text PDF: http://scholars.wlu.ca/etd/1838


Abstract

Multi Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT), Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluations (PROMETHEE) and Elimination methods of Multi-Criteria Decision analysis (MCDA) are tested to assess and compare the sustainability of different agricultural systems. Indicators and composite indicators are derived from data gathered using the agricultural sustainability categories of Productivity, Stability, Efficiency, Durability, Compatibility and Equity (PSEDCE). Agricultural systems around the world face challenges from current agricultural practices, over-exploitation of natural resources, population growth and climate change. As a result, understanding agricultural sustainability has become a global issue. Assessment is a first step in benchmarking and tracking agricultural sustainability and can support related policy and programmes. This thesis applied the PSEDCE categories to understand more about the complexities inherent to agricultural sustainability assessment. Agricultural sustainability assessment (ASA) requires a wide variety of ecological, economic and social information with various methods. In the first part of this thesis, a systematic analysis of the scientific soundness and user-friendliness of eight ASA approaches revealed that MCDA based ASA is the preferred holistic method. MCDA can take into account both qualitative and quantitative indicators of all dimensions of sustainability and analyze them to draw a comprehensive picture. As a multifaceted, complex issue, agricultural sustainability assessment is well-suited to MCDA, which is able to handle large data sets including stakeholders’ perspectives. Given that it is a relatively new analysis procedure in the study of agriculture, only a few researchers have applied this technique to measure sustainability. Considering these findings, three MCDA methods, MAUT, PROMETHEE and Elimination, were tested to measure the relative sustainability of five agricultural systems in coastal Bangladesh. To investigate the performance of MAUT, PROMETHEE, and Elimination, a total of 50 indicators from agricultural sustainability categories of PSEDCE were tested. From these 50 indicators, 15 composite indicators were developed through proportionate normalization and hybrid aggregation rules of arithmetic mean and geometric mean. The 15 composite indicators were used in MAUT and PROMETHEE analysis, and the 50 indicators were used in Elimination analysis. The analyses show that MAUT is able to aggregate diverse information and stakeholders’ perspectives to generate a robust score that enables a comparison of sustainability across the different agricultural systems. PROMETHEE is a non-compensatory approach that can also accommodate a variety of information and provide thresholds for ranking relative agricultural sustainability for each of the five agricultural systems. Elimination ranks the sustainability of agricultural systems through a set of straightforward decision rules expressed in the form of “if … then …” conditions. Elimination appears to be quick and…