3.6. Land Suitability Assessment
In this process, the land suitability map for ecotourism has been created, based on the linear combination of each used factor’s suitability score as shown in Equation (2). The AHP method was applied to determine the relative importance of all selected factors. The total suitability score “Si” for each land unit (i.e. each raster cell in the map) was calculated from the linear combination of suitability score obtained for each factor and criteria involved.
where “n” is the number of factors, “Wi” is the multiplication of all associated weights in the hierarchy of “ith” factor ( as seen in Table 5) and “Ri” is a rating given for the defined class of the “ith” factor found on the assessed land unit. In Multi Criteria Evaluation (MCE) using a weighted linear combination, the assigned weights need to be summed up to 1 for each category/subcategory defined. However, each factor in the last layer was classified into 4 suitability classes (S1, S2, S3, N) and their suitability scores were presented in the standardized format ranging from 0 (least suitable) to 1 (most suitable). Finally, the total suitability score from each factor were assembled to create site suitability map for ecotourism. The land suitability map for ecotourism has been created, based on the linear combination of each used factor’s suitability score. The GIS-based model (modified from Baniya [22]) for multi-criteria land suitability evaluation for ecotourism is shown in Fig. 4.