Selection of Plants for Resilient and Sustainable Urban Greenbelt Development Using a Multicriteria Decision-Making Approach

Plants play an essential role in limiting pollutants, lowering greenhouse gas emissions, and mitigating the urban heat island effect, highlighting the significance of appropriate plant selection in urban greenbelt development. However, the plant selection process has received limited attention in developing countries like India. This study proposed an improved plant selection method for urban greenbelts. Selection criteria were identified, including regional geographical tolerance (RGT), urban environmental tolerance (UET), aesthetic appearance (AA), economic value (EV), pest and disease resilience (PDR), growth characteristics (GC), maintenance (MT), and medicinal property (MP). A panel of experts assigned relative weights to the selected criteria, and with respect to each criterion, the relative weights were allocated for three types of plant species (large, medium, and small) using a multicriteria decision-making approach. In addition, two-way ANOVA and principal component analysis (PCA) were performed for the statistical analysis. The findings of this study highlighted the selection criteria in the following order: RGT > UET > GC > MP > PDR > EV > MT > AA. Ficus benghalensis ranked the highest in the large category of species with a weight of 0.164, Azadirachta indica (0.187) in the medium category, and Bougainvillea spectabilis (0.163) in the small category. The two-way ANOVA test revealed significant differences (P < 0.05) in global weights among different categories of plant species, and the PCA test demonstrated a strong correlation between MP and PDR (P < 0.05, r = 0.69). Findings can be utilized to enhance the urban greenbelt’s effectiveness and ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration.