Sustainable urban farming using a two-phase multi-objective and multi-criteria decision-making approach

Abstract

For several reasons, recent attention has focused on urban agriculture in the context of sustainable and smart agriculture. Most of the global population has relocated from rural to urban areas. The ecological impact of agriculture is a rising concern. Furthermore, food insecurity, particularly food availability, remains a significant issue. Satisfying rising food demand with minimal environmental impact is a significant barrier to more sustainable food production. In this article, we study a sustainable location for urban farming that optimally balances economic and environmental objectives. We formulate the problem as a multi-objective linear program that considers maximizing the ecological benefit and crop production yield and minimizing transportation cost, sensor cost, and CO₂ emissions. The proposed mathematical model is then solved using a two-phase method. The first phase uses several multi-objective optimization (MOO) methods (weighted sum, epsilon-constraint, augmented epsilon) to generate a pool of compromise solutions. The second phase uses multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods (MARCOS, VIKOR, and Possibility Degree) to rank compromise solutions. We performed a sensitivity analysis first by studying the effect of different criteria weights (balanced, environmentally, and economically oriented) and then by investigating the rank reversal. Furthermore, we developed a thorough validity test that examines the impact of the dynamic elements of rank reversal by changing the importance of the model's input parameters. To provide a fusion ranking of the MCDM rankings, we devised an aggregated ranking approach using the half-quadratic (HQ) method.