Weighting Land Suitability Factors by the PLUS Method

The weighting of land suitability factors by human experts is integral to land suitability analysis. For a satisfactory result, a tested holistic approach is called upon to systematically address the issues of preference acquisition, synthesis, and inconsistency diagnosis. As an extension of the analytic hierarchy process to the study of land suitability analysis, the PLUS (prioritization for land-use suitability) method presented in this paper is devised toward this end. The case study demonstrates its applicability in real-world situations.