The use of GIS and multi-criteria decision-making as a decision tool in forestry

Abstract

Geographical information systems (GIS) provide forest managers with tools to use in planning forest operations by allowing them to visualize and integrate data into the planning decisions. As the forest planning process becomes increasingly complicated, there is a need to assist forest planners with operative tools. The combined use of GIS and multi-criteria decision methods (MCDM) allows forest managers to visualize solutions proposed by MCDM and to have a better understanding of the problem they confront. The main purpose of this paper is to show the integration of GIS and the analytic hierarchy process for forest firefighting planning.

Keywords:

• geographical information systems
• forest management
• multi-criteria decision analysis
• multi-criteria decision methods
• analytic hierarchy process
• spatial multi-criteria decision-making

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nurcan Temiz

About the Authors

Nurcan Temiz was born in 1976 in Berlin, Germany. She holds a Bachelor's degree from the Department of Business Administration at Cukurova University and an MSc from the Department of Business Administration at Mustafa Kemal University. She completed a Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Statistics at Dokuz Eylul University. She worked as a research asssistant between 1997 and 2001 in the Department of Business Administration at Mustafa Kemal University. She has been working as a research assistant since 2001 in the Deparment of Statistics at Dokuz Eylul University. Her main interest areas are operations research, geographical information systems, operations research and geographical information systems applications in forestry.

Vahap Tecim

Vahap Tecim was born in 1965 in Malatya, Turkey. He is an associate professor in the Department of Econometrics at Dokuz Eylul University. He has a Bachelor's degree from the Department of Economics at Dokuz Eylul University and an MSc from the Department of Econometrics at Dokuz Eylul University. He has another MSc from System Science, Ottawa Unversity and a PhD from Management Science (Operations Research), Lancaster University. He has acted as a project coordinator in different GIS-based projects. His main interest areas are system design and system analysis, information systems and information technologies, geographical information systems and operations research.