Fuzzy analytic network process approach to evaluate land and sea criteria for land use planning in coastal areas

Coastal areas are marginal regions between the land and sea. These areas have environmental value, but over-development imposes pressures on their ecosystems and brings about a multitude of challenges. Negative environmental impacts such as land-based source pollution are not only limited to land but also have adverse effects on the marine environment. Sustainable land-use planning has been applied to balance economic production, social needs, and environmental conservation in coastal areas. While previous studies have focused on land oriented criteria, they did not consider the interactions with adjacent marine environments. The purpose of this paper is to select criteria and outline the importance of integrating sea and land criteria in the context of land-use planning in coastal areas of Iran. This is the first time that the Decision Making Trial and Laboratory Model (DEMATEL) and Analytical Network Process (ANP) method with fuzzy logic have been used to select land-and sea-oriented criteria for land-use planning. The results illustrate that “biodiversity of fauna and flora at sea,” “area of spawning,” “biodiversity of fauna and flora in land,” “breeding grounds,” and “distribution of fauna and flora at sea” are the five most important criteria for coastal land-use planning. The integrated framework presented in this paper provides a holistic approach for coastal land-use planning.