Cutaneous leishmaniasis susceptibility mapping using multi-criteria decision-making techniques, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and analytic network process (ANP)

Cutaneous leech is one of the six major diseases and an example of epidemic diseases in tropical regions. Prevalence and spread of this disease is affected by environmental factors and climatic conditions as well as economic, social and cultural issues. In this research, Analytic Hierarchy Process and network analyzes are used to prepare susceptible cutaneous leeches map. Considering high incidence of cutaneous leech in Khuzestan province, Izeh city was selected as a case study.
For this purpose, the number of patients affected by this disease in Izeh was obtained from the Provincial Health Center from 2009 to 2014. Information layers of elevation, rainfall, temperature, humidity, distance from river, distance from rural areas and land use were identified as effective parameter and their maps were prepared in GIS environment. Parameters were compared in pairs by using AHP and ANP and weight of each factors determining their impacts was calculated in Expert Choice and Super Decision software. Then these parameters were combined based on their obtained weights in ArcGIS software and the final cutaneous leech map was prepared. Evaluation of these methods was performed using relative operation curve (ROC) and 16 points related to leech disease.
The results of weighting effective parameters using AHP and ANP showed that the highest weight is related to elevation, temperature and rainfall parameters, respectively. The results of ROC assessment showed that in preparing the map, ANP had an accuracy of 87.8% and AHP had an accuracy of 68.9%.
The results of ANP showed that this model had suitable accuracy in preparing susceptible cutaneous leech map and AHP had moderate accuracy in preparing susceptible cutaneous leech map.