Development of open source plugin for multi-criteria decision making analysis

In recent years, the use of open source software has been increasing in the world and in our country. Open source software, in addition to being more reliable by users, increases its popularity day by day thanks to its free nature and brings together all users of the world with the same purpose thanks to the voluntary communities established. The word Free in this software does not mean free, but means freedom in the world. After the establishment of the Free Software Foundation, the first corporate initiative to develop free software, in 1985, many associations and foundations have been established over the years. Founded in 2006, the Open Source Geography Foundation (OSGeo) developed QGIS, an open source GIS software. QGIS software allows users to develop their own plug-in tools with open source python software support, while Qt Designer software, which allows plug-in developers to design graphical user interfaces (GUI), allows the development of different design architectures. In this study, it is aimed to design a free GIS plugin using multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods with the help of QGIS software. In this context, the interface design was made with the Qt Designer program and the geographic tools included in the plugin were coded using the QGIS API using the python programming language and the PyQGIS adapter used in plugin development. The communication between the geographical tools and the interface was coded with signal-slot connections and the design was completed. It is aimed to contribute to the development of free software by sharing the designed plugin with all users of the world free of charge.