A Comparative Study of Application of MADM Techniques in Measurement of Rural Development Level in Hamadan Province of Iran

This was a comparative study of the application of MADM techniques in measurement of rural development level in Hamadan province of Iran. To this end, 53 variables were defined in eight indicators of demographic, infrastructure, education, health, communication, services, institutional and economic. The weights of these indicators were determined by using AHP and Entropy methods and combining their results. Then, the development levels of subdistricts were measured by using TOPSIS, SAW and Numerical Taxonomy techniques. To compare the results of these techniques, coefficient of dispersion, mean percentage difference and sum of difference intensity were applied. Based on comparing the results of coefficient of dispersion, the Numerical Taxonomy technique was found to be an optimum method for ranking and the SAW and TOPSIS techniques less precisely ranked the rural areas. Comparing the mean percentage differences of the techniques showed that SAW and the Numerical Taxonomy had less percentage of variation compared to TOPSIS. Also, according to the sum of difference intensity, SAW technique had the lowest difference intensity compared to the other two.