An Efficient Ensemble VTOPES Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Model for Sustainable Sugarcane Farms

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

Congratulation with new results presented in the paper "An Efficient Ensemble VTOPES Multi-criteria Decision-Making Model for Agriculture Applications". Several comments on the improvement of the presented research follow:

1. The authors of presented methods must be cited in the text and presented in the reference list; For example page 2 line 59. Mentioned method TOPSIS author of the method Hwang Yoon 1981;

page 2 line 61 VIKOR authors Opricovic and Tzeng 2004;  and page 2 line 66 SAW author McCrimon 1968 and etc.

2. In the paper must be included the sustainability aspects or criteria regarding the scope of the journal;

4. Mathematical description of presented in page 4 must be corrected (formulas must be numbered;  and etc.

5. The sustainability aspects must be presented in the research case study;

6. Table 10 can be improved with technical corrections;

Reviewer

Author Response

Thank you so much for your positive feedback. We have improved the manuscript according to the reviewer’s comments and suggestions.

 

Comment 1: Congratulation with new results presented in the paper "An Efficient Ensemble VTOPES Multi-criteria Decision-Making Model for Agriculture Applications". 

 

Response: Thank you very much for your positive appreciation.

 

Comment 2:  The authors of presented methods must be cited in the text and presented in the reference list; For example page 2 line 59. Mentioned method TOPSIS author of the method Hwang Yoon 1981; page 2 line 61 VIKOR authors Opricovic and Tzeng 2004;  and page 2 line 66 SAW author McCrimmon 1968, etc.

Response: Thank you for the suggestions. As per the advice, the following references have been added in the revised version.

 

Reference for the author of the TOPSIS method is included as

Hwang, C.L.; Yoon, K. (1981). Multiple Attribute Decision Making: Methods and Applications. New York: Springer-Verlag.

 

Reference for the author of the VIKOR method is included as

Opricovic, S., & Tzeng, G. H. (2004). Compromise solution by MCDM methods: A comparative analysis of VIKOR and TOPSIS. European journal of operational research, 156(2), 445-455.

 

Reference for the author of GRA is included as

Julong, D. (1989). Introduction to grey system theory. The Journal of grey system, 1(1), 1-24.

 

Reference for the author of SAW method is included as

MacCrimmon, K. R. (1968). Decisionmaking among multiple-attribute alternatives: a survey and consolidated approach (No. RM-4823-ARPA). RAND CORP SANTA MONICA CA.

 

Reference for the author of AHP is included as

Saaty, T. L. (2004). Decision making—the analytic hierarchy and network processes (AHP/ANP). Journal of systems science and systems engineering, 13(1), 1-35.

 

Reference for the author of ELECTRE is included as

Roy, B. (1990). The outranking approach and the foundations of ELECTRE methods. In Readings in multiple criteria decision aid (pp. 155-183). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

 

Reference for the author of Shannons’ Entropy is included as

Shannon, C. E., & Weaver, W. (1998). The mathematical theory of communication. University of Illinois Press.

 

Reference for the author of the Delphi method is included as

Dalkey, N., & Helmer, O. (1963). An experimental application of the Delphi method to the use of experts. Management Science, 9(3), 458-467.

 

For detailed changes, please refer to pp. 2 and 3

 

 

Comment 3: In the paper must be included the sustainability aspects or criteria regarding the scope of the journal;

 

Response: Thank you for the suggestions. As per the advice, we have included the sustainability aspects in the revised version, as follows:

 

The following lines are added to the first two lines of abstract:

 

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.

 

The following paragraphs are included in the third paragraph of the introduction:

 

The severity of the increase in population is much severe in some countries around the world, particularly in India. There is a demand for food being increased every year along with the increase in population. Further, this can be solved by applying sustainable agriculture practices. The selection of land for crop cultivation has a significant impact on sustainable agriculture. An essential requirement for long term productivity and profitability obtained from farming in rural areas is sustainable agriculture development.  Sustainable agriculture includes social, financial, and environmental aspects. Crop productivity is one of the essential elements in the financial aspects of farming [1]. Identification of suitable farm for crop cultivation is essential to maximize the productivity of crops.  Crop production relies on multiple criteria that may differ from place to place. The present work emphasis on the sugarcane farm selection that considers comprehensive parameters for sustainable farming.

Several decision models have been developed so far for the development of sustainable agriculture. A decision support model was developed for the selection of cropping pattern using Fuzzy and MCDM approaches for sustainable agriculture development [1]. A stochastic decision model was developed using Multi-criteria decision analysis to select sustainable biomass crop for the production of biofuels with multiple conflicting criteria [2]. A decision model was proposed to rank sustainable energy conversion technologies, which convert agriculture residues to energy using Fuzzy AHP and VIKOR methods [3]. A model was developed to identify the best water supply management alternative for sustainable agriculture using VIKOR, and Fuzzy Order weighted average methods for climate-change adaptation [4]. A hybrid model was developed to select sustainable supply chain for Agri produce in India using Interpretive Structural modeling (ISM), Decision making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL), Analytic Network Process (ANP) methods [5].

 

[1] Qureshi, M. R. N., Singh, R. K., & Hasan, M. A. (2018). Decision support model to select crop pattern for sustainable agricultural practices using fuzzy MCDM. Environment, development and sustainability, 20(2), 641-659.

[2] Cobuloglu, H. I., & Büyüktahtakın, İ. E. (2015). A stochastic multi-criteria decision analysis for sustainable biomass crop selection. Expert Systems with Applications, 42(15-16), 6065-6074.

[3] Wang, B., Song, J., Ren, J., Li, K., Duan, H., & Wang, X. E. (2019). Selecting sustainable energy conversion technologies for agricultural residues: A fuzzy AHP-VIKOR based prioritization from life cycle perspective. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 142, 78-87.

[4] Golfam, P., Ashofteh, P. S., & Loáiciga, H. A. (2019). Evaluation of the VIKOR and FOWA Multi-Criteria Decision Making Methods for Climate-Change Adaptation of Agricultural Water Supply. Water Resources Management, 1-18.

[5] Chauhan, A., Kaur, H., Yadav, S., & Jakhar, S. K. (2019). A hybrid model for investigating and selecting a sustainable supply chain for agri-produce in India. Annals of Operations Research, 1-22.

 

 

For detailed changes, please refer to pp. 2

 

 

 

 

Comment 4: Mathematical description of presented in page 4 must be corrected (formulas must be numbered and etc.

 

Response: Thank you for the suggestion. As per the advice, the mathematical description has been revised as follows:

 

VTOPES model

For g main parameters matrix Y with m alternatives and n sub-parameters do the following:

Determination of Entropy

                                                                                                       (1)

where is the entropy constant and defined as , n is the number of sub-parameters and m is the number of alternatives.

Calculation of Degree of Divergence

 where D is the degree of divergence.                                          (2)

Sub-parameter weight calculation

The weight of sub-parameter,, is defined as

,                                                                    (3)

Here .

The measure of utility computation

                                                               (4)

where   and A is utility measure

The measure of Regret Computation

The regret measure is obtained by

                                                          (5)

Generation of Ranking Indices of Main parameters

    where                              (6)

 denotes the ranking index of alternative with respect to the main parameter.

 is strategic weight representing maximal group utility.

is the weight of each regret measure.

;    

     

Determination of Ranking Indices Matrices

The Ranking Indices Matrix with m alternatives and g columns is represented as.

                                                     (7)

where C_t is partitioned columnar sub-matrices of X initialized with value zero and .

Standard Deviation Computation

                                                                              (8)

where  and σ represents mean and standard deviation, respectively.

Calculation of main parameter weights

The weight of j^th main parameter is calculated by.

                                                                                 (9)

where  and .

Computation of weighted normalized decision matrix

The weighted normalized decision matrix is calculated by

                                                                                           (10)

where  and .

Calculation of Positive Ideal solution

The positive ideal solution (most preferable alternative) is obtained by

                                         (11)

Calculation of Negative Ideal Solution

The negative ideal solution (least preferable alternative) is obtained by

                                      (12)

Determination of Separation Measure

The separation distance of each alternative from the positive ideal solution is determined by

    where                                                    (13)

The separation distance of each alternative from the negative ideal solution is determined by

    where                                                   (14)  

Computation of Final Assessment Values

The final assessment values of the given alternatives can be obtained by

,                                                                                 (15)

where  and .

 

 

For detailed changes, please refer to pp. 4, 5 and 6

 

Comment

Response: Thank you for the suggestion. We have now included the sustainability aspects in the revised version of the manuscript.

 

Comment 6: Table 10 can be improved with technical corrections;

Response: Thank you for the suggestion. We have now improved Table 10 with technical corrections incorporated as follows:

 

 

 

Sl No	Sugarcane Farms	Average Yield data in tonnes	Yield Ranks	VTOPES ranks	GRA ranks	SAW ranks
1	F13	9.8	1	1	1	1
2	F5	9.2	2	2	2	2
3	F16	8.4	3	3	3	3
4	F12	8.1	4	4	4	4
5	F17	7.9	5	5	5	7
6	F15	7.7	6	6	6	5
7	F1	7.5	7	7	9	10
8	F14	7.4	8	8	8	6
9	F7	7	9	11	7	8
10	F8	6.5	10	9	10	11
11	F19	6.3	11	10	11	9
12	F3	6	12	12	12	13
13	F18	5.8	13	13	13	12
14	F4	5.6	14	14	16	16
15	F2	5.3	15	15	15	18
16	F20	5	16	16	18	15
17	F10	4.7	17	17	17	17
18	F11	4.3	18	18	14	14
19	F9	4.2	19	19	20	19
20	F6	3.4	20	20	19	20

 

 

For detailed changes, please refer to pp. 11

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The title of the manuscript is rather general. I suggest to define more specific title, e.g.:

“An Efficient Ensemble VTOPES Multi-criteria Decision-Making Model for Sugarcane Farms” since the example used for the study is about such farms.

The manuscript is not properly formatted. For example Table 3 overlaps the text of the manuscript. Moreover some symbols used for equations are not standard, for example “P” in the equation of standard deviation is used as a mean while “X” is typical letter which is used as a mean for statistical sample. I suggest to use commonly used letters and symbols for all equations.

The Tables and Figures should be self-explanatory, which means that should be clear enough without reading all the text of the manuscript. The titles of all the Tables and Figures should be more detailed.

Figure 1 present ranks for different methods of ordination of farms but it is not clear why the vertical axis has values from 0 to 80 but number of farms and ranks are to 20. Why cumulative ranks are presented. In my opinion every rank should be presented as values from 1 to 20. Moreover all the ranks for all the methods are strongly correlated to yield ranks. Is there any rationale for using different methods if simple rank based on yield is good enough for evaluation of the farms?

Formatting of the references is not proper. It should be adjusted according template of the journal. Moreover other parts of the manuscript should be prepared according the guidelines in the template of the manuscript available at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/instructions

General conclusion: The title of the manuscript suggest that classification of the farms is based on multiple variables (“Multi-criteria” in the title of the manuscript), while the presented results are mainly based on one variable, i.e. yield.  In my opinion it is not “Multi-criteria Decision-Making Model”. Could you explain the advance of the methods used for ranks in comparison of univariate evaluation?

Author Response

Thank you so much for your positive feedback. We have improved the manuscript according to the reviewer’s comments and suggestions.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you authors for the correction and improvement the paper

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript was improved according all the comments in the review and in my opinion can be published in present form.