Decision Support System of Salt Points Grouping Using K-Means Method

Abstract

Madura Island is known as Salt Island. Madura has always been one of the major contributors to the national salt production. However, the resulting salt production has not been able to meet the needs of national salt and salt for public consumption. There are 4 salt producing districts in Madura, namely Sampang, Bangkalan, Sumenep and Pamekasan. There are several factors that affect the low productivity of salt, including weather and climate, undeveloped technology, inadequate means and infrastructure for smallholder salt production, and marketing of people’s salt is still on a local scale. The purpose of this study is to create and design a decision support system application for grouping salt ponds to increase the productivity and economy of the Madurese community, especially salt farmers in Sampang and Bangkalan districts. The method used for grouping salt ponds is the K-Means Clustering method. This method can divide or partition salt pond data into several clusters according to the characteristics of each data. The grouping of salt ponds is based on several criteria data, namely land area, land status, labor, capital, production, profit, education, and experience of salt farmers. The results of this study resulted in 3 clusters for salt ponds with high productivity (C1) of 46%, medium productivity (C2) of 31% and low productivity (C3) of 23%.