A Critique on
INTEGRATING GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS GIS AND MULTI-CRITERIA METHODS: A CASE STUDY
Author: Eliane Goncalves Gomes
, Marcos Pereira Estellita Lins
. Journal:
Annals of Operations Research :
Oct 2002 .Vol.116, Iss. 1; pg. 243
By: Rahmawaty
I. Title of the Study
As a researcher, the title provided by the authors has the element of simplicity, brevity, specificity and location and subject matter focused. The reader can easily determine what
the study is all about and what it tries to investigate Integrating GIS and multi-criteria methods: A case study
and what mathematical model? A Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis MCDAmulti objective Linear Programming MOLP. Brief title but very informative. To
more make informative, it would be better if the author mention the location of the study on the title, so the reader know the location of the study.
Just going through the title, one can easily understand that the concern of the research study is related to subject optimization model in forestry FRM 294, because using the keywords
such as “multi-criteria methods” clearly indicate that the subject matter is related.
II. Introduction A. Background of the Study:
The authors looked into the case study that is aimed at selecting the best municipal district of Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil, in relation to the quality of urban life, using Integrating GIS
and multi-criteria methods. The visualization of the context, structure of the problem and its alternative solutions is one
of the most powerful components of a decision support system Gomes and Lins, 1999. Thus, the integration GIS-MCDA has the objective of favoring decision-makers, providing
them with ways to evaluate several alternatives, based on multiple, conflictive criteria. The reduction of the set of alternatives and the selection of the best one usually require the
use of multi-criteria techniques. Thus, improvement of the capacities of GIS in the decision- making can be achieved by the introduction of multi-criteria techniques in the GIS
environment. The authors used the vector GIS spatial data structure and the smallest geographical unit is
the municipal district. Thus, each alternative is visualized as a municipality, or a polygon of the vector database. Furthermore, this paper contributes to the literature on GIS-MCDA
integration, by making use of the Multi-Objective Linear Programming MOLP approach as the multi-criteria method almost all of the case studies found in the literature employ the
Multi-attribute approach, besides briefly describing the state of the art on this subject. Besides, as the problem presented has a multi-attribute nature, we present a method to
convert it into a multi-objective one, aiming to make use of the latters facilities no requirement of precisely specifying an a priori problem, interactive use of computational
graphical interface, making the interaction analyst-decision-maker-modeling easier.
Universitas Sumatera Utara
B. Objectives of the Study:
The objective of this paper is to present a hypothetical example of the integration and to show how the integration between GIS and the multi-criteria methods can support spatial
decisions. The authors present a case study that is aimed at selecting the best municipal district of Rio
de Janeiro State, Brazil, in relation to the quality of urban life. Five families of criteria are analysed: infrastructure, education, security, health and work. Selection of criteria in each of
these families was based on the existence, collecting periodicity and reliability of the information. Each municipal district is seen as an alternative represented by polygons of the
vector GIS database, and the best municipal district is the one that exhibits the characteristics of urban life quality closest to those desired by the decision-maker.
III. Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis MCDA and Multiple Objective Linear Programming MOLP Models
