The GIS-based MCDA for suitability evaluation has been developed
as a tool to support decision-making systems for management
policies and strategies (Geertman & Stillwell 2004; Gerber et al.
2008; Malczewski 2004; Malczewski & Jackson 2000). MCDA combines
information about several criteria to form a single index of
evaluation. A linear combination is used to combine continuous factors
by applying a weight to each factor, followed by a summation
of the results to yield a suitability map (Eastman 2001; Malczewski
2000) (Eq. (1)):