Constanţa Zoie RADULESCU¹, Magdalena Turek RAHOVEANU^2
1 I C I Bucharest
(National Institute for R & D in Informatics)
8-10 Averescu Blvd.
011455 Bucharest 1, Romania
radulescu@ici.ro
² Institute for Agricultural Economics and Rural Development
Bd. Marasti nr. 61, Bucharest 1, RO-011464, Romania
mturek2003@yahoo.com

Abstract: This paper presents a multi-criteria evaluation framework which integrates the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) methods. This approach takes into consideration subjective judgments of the decision makers. The criteria weights are calculated by using the AHP method. Subsequently, rankings of the alternatives are determined by the SAW method. Our multi-criteria evaluation framework is used for evaluating the performance of a fish farm, called Malina, located near the villages Sendreni and Smardan, Galati county, Romania. The analysis ranks the performance of the fish farm over a period of seven years, so the output is a trend over time reflecting the progress of the fish farm. The proposed framework enables the decision makers to better understand the whole evaluation process. It provides a more accurate, effective, and systematic evaluation tool.

Keywords: evaluation framework, multi-criteria model, AHP, SAW, fish farm.

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CITE THIS PAPER AS:
Constanţa Zoie RADULESCU, Magdalena Turek RAHOVEANU, A Multi-Criteria Evaluation Framework for Fish Farms, Studies in Informatics and Control, ISSN 1220-1766, vol. 20 (2), pp. 181-186, 2011. https://doi.org/10.24846/v20i2y201110

1. Introduction

Legislation requires that fisheries should be managed according to the principles of ecologically sustainable development. This imposes a complex set of potentially conflicting, multiple objectives. Primary considerations in fisheries management are: (i) sustainability of the resource base, (ii) economic viability and (iii) equity in access to the resource.

One of the reasons of management failure in fisheries is the conflict between ecological constraints and social and economic priorities, the latter often having priority over resource conservation. Moreover, fisheries management issues (stock evaluation, recruitment process, catches, eco-systemic effects, etc.) are highly marked by uncertainty. An important issue is thus to determine management procedures that give acceptable results with respect to the sustainability objectives while being robust to uncertainties [11], [12].

In this paper, we present a multi-criteria evaluation framework which integrates the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) methods. This approach takes into consideration subjective judgments of the decision makers. The criteria weights are calculated by using the AHP method. Then rankings of the alternatives are determined by the SAW method. Our multi-criteria evaluation framework is used for evaluating the performance of a fish farm, called Malina, located near the villages Sendreni and Smardan, Galati county, Romania. About 127 ha out of a total fishery area of 131 ha are covered by water. The analysis ranks the performance of the fish farm over a period of seven years so the output is a trend over time reflecting the progress of the fish farm.