A comparison of the AHP and TOPSIS multi-criteria decision-making tools for prioritizing sub-watersheds using morphometric parameters’ analysis

Watershed prioritization is becoming critically important for natural resource management, especially watershed management. A helpful decision support tool helps in providing various morphological attributes with sufficient weights and finally, ranks the sub-watersheds based on priority. It is essential to recognize environmentally stressed areas for the watershed resources with a lineage of soil erosion. The Bamni Banjar watershed of Madhya Pradesh was delineated, and further analysis of watershed’s morphometry has been discussed in this paper. For the watershed, the morphometric parameters under the linear and areal heads were quantified. Morphometric parameters, viz., stream frequency, texture ratio, length of overland flow under linear aspect, and form factor, shape factor, circulatory ratio, elongation ratio, compactness coefficient, drainage density, and constant of channel maintenance under the areal aspect were considered. The sub-watersheds were prioritized with the AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process) and TOPSIS (Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) methods. In general, the results showed that morphometric parameters are successful in defining regions susceptible to erosion and that the AHP approach is also more predictive than the other models.