Enhancing Geographical Information Systems Capabilities with Multi-Criteria Evaluation Functions

Abstract

ABSTRACT The essence of this paper is to present a strategy for integrating geographical information systems (GIS) and multicriteria analysis (MCA), a family of operations research/management science (OR/MS) tools that have experienced very successful applications in different domains since the 1960s. In fact, GIS has several limitations in the domain of spatial decision-aid. The remedy to these limitations is to integrate GIS technology with OR/MS tools and especially with MCA. The long-term aim of such integration is to develop the so-called spatial decision support system (SDSS), which is devoted to help decision makers in spatial problems. Thus, a design of a SDSS is also presented in this paper.