Designing a decision support system in predicting the level of biodiversity literacy of the citizens of Tehran province

Today, the environment is exposed to serious threats at the global and national levels, which have been created by humans. Lack of awareness of environmental issues has caused many problems and increased negative effects on the environment. Accordingly, this study was conducted with the aim of designing a DSS to predict the level of biodiversity literacy of the citizens of the province in order to make decisions and future plans for educating individuals. The statistical population in the present study was selected from people aged 6 years and above in Tehran province. Accordingly, the sampling volume was calculated according to the Cochran's of 384 people. The biodiversity model designed by the ANN with two hidden layers and 19 neurons and the linear transmission function of linear sigmoid tangent and with an explanatory coefficient of 0.89 showed a very good ability to predict the awareness of citizens' biodiversity. The most important variables influencing this model were the type of activity and university education of the individuals. The type of activity is inversely related to the level of awareness of biodiversity. Also, the level of university education is very directly related to the level of awareness of biodiversity, although most people answered questions without university education and their average answers were two questions, but the designed model showed that the higher the number of university education, the more correct answers. It will also be increased by individuals. Finally, the DSS was designed with the help of MATLAB for use in other provinces.