Masters Degrees (Geography and Environmental Studies)

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Browsing Masters Degrees (Geography and Environmental Studies) by Author "Bester, Frederick Johannes"

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    Multi-criteria decision making and geographical information systems : an extension for ArcView
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2004-12) Bester, Frederick Johannes; Van Niekerk, Adriaan; Ferreira, S. L. A.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences . Dept. of Geography and Environmental Studies.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) is a set of techniques designed specifically for the analysis of complex problems. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) focus on spatial problem-solving and spatial analysis. The integration of these methodologies offers a powerful approach to decision making. Despite the fact that most spatial decision problems are multi-criteria problems by nature, the process of MCDM is not well established or effectively integrated into the field of spatial analysis and GIS. This research focuses on bridging the gap between MCDM and GIS. To this end, a generic MCDM extension was designed and implemented in ArcView. As a result, a first version MCDM extension is offered. The extension expands ArcView's functionality with a limited set of MCDM methods. This functionality is illustrated on two problems involved with developing the tourism potential at Coutada 16 Wildlife Reserve in Mozambique. The MCDM extension facilitates procedures that allow the evaluation of spatial problems and includes the ability to deal with both raster and vector data. This system offers a generic problemsolving environment, which can be used to evaluate geographical problems of any nature. This research identifies a number of improvements to the developed functionality and successfully illustrates the potential problem-solving capabilities associated with MCDM integrated with ArcView.