Comparison of AHP and a Utility-Based Theory Method for Selected Vertical and Horizontal Forest Structure Indicators in the Sustainability Assessment of Forest Management in the Sierra de Guadarrama National Park, Madrid Region

Abstract

This paper compares two pairwise comparison methods, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and a utility theory based method (UTB method), for sustainability assessment in forest management at the local level. Six alternatives were ranked, corresponding to six different types of forest management in the Sierra de Guadarrama National Park in the Madrid Region in Spain. The methods were tested by postgraduate students enrolled in a “Decision Support Systems” course at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Three sustainability indicators were considered: structural diversity, timber yield, and amount of biomass. The utility theory based method was the first to be compared, which is implemented in the computer program SILVANET. For each pair of alternatives, the students were asked which one they considered to be more sustainable. In the case of the Analytic Hierarchy Process, the students compared the indicators and the alternatives for each indicator. The Spearman’s correlation coefficient indicated that there was no correlation between the rankings for most of the students. The results revealed that the convergence in opinion in the AHP method was higher than in the utility based method for a low number of participants, and distinguished the differences between the alternatives more accurately. However in the case of the UTB method, the participants considered sustainability as a whole and made a more context-based comparison.

An Evaluation of National Park System Pilot Area Using the AHP-Delphi Approach: A Case Study of the Qianjiangyuan National Park System Pilot Area, China

“…This method seeks to deconstruct a complex problem into a hierarchical structure level and more influence factors are included. It is based on humans' experience and knowledge to generate relative magnitudes through pairwise comparison [33]. It also has the advantage to capture the judgement of expert individual decisions and combine these into a consensus [34].…”

Benefit Evaluation of Water and Soil Conservation Measures in Shendong Based on Particle Swarm Optimization and the Analytic Hierarchy Process

“…AHP [54] is a model used to evaluate decision-making problems [5,[55][56][57][58]. This model changes to decompose a decision-making problem into several levels.…”

“…The classification of soil and water conservation measures is an important basis for soil erosion investigation, soil and water conservation planning, the extension of soil and water conservation measures, and benefit evaluation. According to the current situation of soil and water conservation work in the study area, all types of practical measures were not included in the evaluation system, but comprehensive indexes, such as forest and grass coverage [39,72] and the soil erosion rate, were calculated based on afforestation, recommendations, and terrace landscape [35][36][37]57,73]. The evaluation system avoids the overall benefit evaluation because of the particularities of engineering measures.…”

Evaluating Management Strategies for Mount Kenya Forest Reserve and National Park to Reduce Fire Danger and Address Interests of Various Stakeholders

“…The developed management strategies varied both in the temporal and spatial scale to meet the various stakeholder interests and this made it even more difficult for the participants to evaluate the strategies. Another observation was that some FGDs' participants only preferred objectives that required a shorter time to be achieved and therefore had strong interests in having them implemented [9,27]. This indicates that the best management strategy that is applicable on the entire area of MKFRNP has to help reduce the fire danger and consider both the short term and long-term interests of the different stakeholder groups for it to be accepted and implemented [9,13].…”