Trends in the Application of Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Methods for Agricultural Land Suitability Assessments: A Keyword Analysis Using Bibliographic Data

The intricacies involved in agricultural land suitability assessments, which necessitate the consideration of various criteria, have urged researchers to adopt Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) methods. These methods enable decision-makers to quantitatively evaluate available sites against chosen criteria, enabling informed decision-making. However, existing literature lacks comprehensive insights into the current advancements and key focus in MCDM applications for agricultural land suitability assessments. Addressing this gap, our study conducted a keyword analysis based on relevant publication data to uncover the trends in MCDM applications for agricultural land suitability assessments. The publication keywords were extracted from 394 relevant publications retrieved from the Scopus database, which were then analysed using the word cloud technique. The analysis reveals a growing interest among researchers in utilizing the Analytical Hierarchy Process, a prominent MCDM method, and Geographic Information System tools for agricultural land suitability assessments. Furthermore, it suggests that integrating MCDM methods with remote sensing could be a promising direction for future research. This study is the first keyword analysis to offer quantitative evidence describing the trends in MCDM applications for agricultural land suitability assessments, facilitating the scientific community to make better-informed decisions about their future research endeavors.