Assessing landscape plans with abbreviated pair-wise comparisons in the AHP (Analitic Hierarchy Process)

Abstract

This paper demonstrates the application of the Analytic Hierarchy Pro?cess (AHP) in assessing landscape plans using the option of abbreviated pair-wise comparisons to simplify the weight elicitation process for decision makers. Whereas the standard AHP elicitation procedure requires a full set of pairwise comparisons among all criteria at each node of the decision hierarchy in order to derive criterion weights for the decision model, the abbreviated pairwise method uses a minimal spanning set of pairwise comparisons, and remaining comparisons are then derived by transitivity rules. In this paper is presented the abbreviated pairwise method with a case study in which alternative management plans are evaluated for the Zvezdarska forest of Belgrade, Serbia. The analysis was performed with the Criterium DecisionPlus software, which fully implements the AHP methodology, and provides useful diagnostics on AHP decision models. As a conclusion, some of the key advantages and disadvantages of the abbreviated pairwise variant of the AHP method are demonstrated. One of the key qualities of the Criterium DecisionPlus software is a clear and easy graphical representation of the results.