Opportunities for strengthening aquaculture industry through multicriteria decision-making

Abstract

In operations research, there are methodological tools included in decision theory that can help decision-makers understand and systematize the decision-making process. Decisions can be classified either as mono-criterial, when only one criterion or goal is considered to evaluate its performance or multicriterial, which takes into account the interaction between two or more goals or criteria that can be in conflict. Natural resource management and finance are some important examples where the implementation of this type of tools has benefited the decision- making process because they allow a number of criteria or objectives to be weighted in a transparent manner to assist when one or more decision-makers are involved. Despite this, its application was not common in aquaculture; however, in recent years, efforts have increased exponentially. This work seeks to identify opportunity areas for development of new aquaculture-related research through the implementation of multicriterial decision-making methods (MCDM). To achieve this, a comprehensive bibliometric analysis was performed to detect MCDM applications that have been implemented in aquaculture industry (24 documents that were grouped into eight applications). Later, this information was complemented through the analysis of selected applications in natural resources management, specifically in fisheries, animal husbandry and agriculture. We propose 23 research topics relevant to the aquaculture industry that can be addressed by the methodologies in MCDM.