Relative importance of evaluation criteria for predicting the optimallocation in aquaculture - a pairwise comparison method approach

Abstract

Identification of optimal location for aquaculture is based on the evaluation of a number of alternatives in termsof a number of decision criteria. In this study, decision criteria were categorized into six broad heads of evaluationcriteria, namely; water, soil, support, infrastructure, input, and risk factor. The information about the relativeimportance of the evaluation criteria was achieved by assigning weightage to each criterion. The relativeimportance of evaluation criteria under consideration was defined by pairwise comparison method. It takes thepairwise comparisons as the input and produces the relative weights as output. Result of the pairwise comparisonmethod showed that the consistency ratio (0.0347) of evaluation criteria was less than the threshold value (0.1).This indicates that the comparisons of each evaluation criterion were perfectly consistent and the relative weightswere suitable for the use in the identification of optimal location in aquaculture.