An efficient ensemble VTOPES multi-criteria decision-making model for sustainable sugarcane farms

Deepa, N, Durai Raj Vincent, PM, Senthil Kumar, N, Srinivasan, K, Chang, CY and Bashir, AK ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7595-2522 (2019) An efficient ensemble VTOPES multi-criteria decision-making model for sustainable sugarcane farms. Sustainability, 11 (16). ISSN 1937-0695

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Abstract

© 2019 by the authors. The role of Information Technology based decision models for sustainable agriculture has gained immense prominence in recent years. Ranking of agriculture farms based on their yield plays a vital role in sustainable agriculture. In this work, an ensemble decision-making model, namely VIKOR (Vlsekriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje), TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution), entropy, and standard deviation (VTOPES), is proposed for ranking the sustainable sugarcane farms. VTOPES system model comprises of four significant steps: (i) determination of significance scores of the sub-parameters, (ii) transformation of sub-parameter sequences into main parameter values, (iii) computation of significant scores of main parameters, and (iv) generation of assessment values and deploying it for ranking the sugarcane farms. The ranking results of the proposed VTOPES model are compared with the ranking patterns obtained from five years average yield data acquired from the selected sugarcane farms. Moreover, the outcomes of the VTOPES model are also compared with other prevalent methods. Subsequently, Spearman's rank correlation method is applied for evaluating the impact of correlation of VTOPES ranks in comparison with the average yield ranks. Thus, it can be noticed that the empirical results of the VTOPES model provide reliable and sustainable results. Therefore, it suffices to be a sustainable decision model for any problem where multiple parameters are involved.