Prioritizing Food Security Indicators in Iran: Application of an Integrated Delphi/AHP Approach

Abstract

Background: Monitoring of food insecurity is a critical issue for planners and policymakers in the public and private sectors in developing countries. Due to the multifactorial and multidimensional nature of food security and a lack of clarity concerning the causes, specific signs, and consequences of food insecurity, developing a reliable food security index is the major challenge related to monitoring food security. Objectives: The objective of this study was to identify the most appropriate indicators of food security at the provincial level in Iran through the application of an integrated approach including Delphi (classic Delphi) and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) from March to September 2013. Materials and Methods:The sample included 43 senior-level managers and experts at the national and provincial levels from different fields of related sciences; they were selected purposively as Delphi and AHP panel members based on the experts' opinions and snowballing. In the first round of Delphi, out of 103 identified indicators, 38 were selected by the experts; the indicators were ranked in the second round. In the AHP study, 25 experts assigned weights in a pairwise comparison of the 20 indicators that had the highest priority based on the Delphi results. Using AHP matrix calculations, this list of indicators was ranked based on priority. Results: Out of 38 indicators identified in Delphi, 8 were related to the availability dimension, 14 were related to the access dimension, and 16 were related to the utilization dimension. Out of 20 indicators that were ranked in the AHP study, 6 indicators were related to availability, 7 were related to utilization, and 7 were related to access dimensions. However, the indicators related to availability had an overall higher rank compared to indicators related to access or utilization. Conclusions: This study identified and ranked 20 indicators as the most appropriate indicators of food security measurements at the provisional level in Iran.

Climate Change and Food Security Prioritizing Indices: Applying Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Social Network Analysis (SNA)

“…Zarei et al [42] pay attention to food sustainability and the prioritization of the indicators by applying the AHP; however, in research, food security was categorized in the sub-criteria level with weight (0.034) and the weight was not noticeable. Likewise, other researchers have made efforts to distinguish the essential indicators of food security in Iran, although they did not define the sustainable component of food security in their AHP hierarchical matrix [40,41].…”

“…Therefore, food security is a challenge [35][36][37][38]. In recent years, several studies have been conducted to estimate food security and identify the criteria that have a principal role in every dimension of food security in Iran with different methods and tools (AHP, TOPSIS, and PROMETHEE) [39][40][41][42]. Nevertheless, those studies did not pay enough attention to the significant role of extreme weather event indicators in their estimation of food security and the limited identification of indicators in each dimension of food security [39][40][41][42].…”