Using GIS and AHP technique for land-use suitability analysis

Nowadays, analysis of land-use suitability requires consideration of variety of criteria including not only natural/physical capacity of a land unit but also socio-economic and environmental impact implications. While GIS has been a powerful tool to handle spatial data in land-use analysis, application of this tool alone could not overcome the issue of inconsistency in expert opinion when trying to judge and assign relative importance to each of many criteria considered in a suitability analysis. To address this issue, the Analytical Hierarchy Process method is used in combination with the GIS tool. The paper presents how the integrated tool has handled effectively a land use suitability analysis for Lam Ha district, Lam Dong Province of Viet Nam which considered simultaneously 12 different criteria