A Scientometric Study on the Analytical Hierarchy Process with Emphasis on Urban Affairs Management Peyman DAVARAZAR *1, 2 , Fereydoon LOTFOLLAHI 1 * Corresponding author 1 Oxford Cert Universal Academy, London, ENGLAND 2 University of Aveiro, Department of Environment and Planning, Aveiro, PORTUGAL E-mail: peyman.davarazar@ua.pt DOI: 10.24193/JSSPSI.2020.6.10 https://doi.org/10.24193/JSSPSI.2020.6.10 K e y w o r d s: Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), scientometric analysis, multi-criteria decision-making analysis A B S T R A C T 1. INTRODUCTION Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) has been widely used as a well-known Multi-Criteria Decision- Making (MCDM) approach in a wide range of scientific areas (Ghavami et al., 2020). AHP was initially introduced by Saaty (1980) to provide a systematic approach for making science-based decisions (Falah et al., 2020). An expert panel with sufficient knowledge in a specific field of science and technology is assisted in order to analyse the involving criteria and sub-criteria and prioritize them based on pairwise comparisons (Jahanshahi et al., 2019; Kamali et al., 2017). This method has been widely employed in a number of application such as energy production and consumption (Liu and Lee, 2019; Salvia et al., 2019; Stojčetović et al., 2019), sustainability (Calabrese et al., 2019; Hasheminasab et al., 2018; Hidroel, 2019), water and wastewater treatment (Hu et al., 2016; Pelorus and Karahalios, 2017), and urban affairs, which is the subject of this scientometric study. Over the past years, urban conditions have undergone significant changes due to rapid industrialization and urbanization (Chu and Tang, 2005). Hence, urban subsystems are experiencing major challenges in terms of their structure and function (Natale et al., 2015). In this context, enough attention has to be paid to the development of urban infrastructures and the related Centre for Research on Settlements and Urbanism Journal of Settlements and Spatial Planning J o u r n a l h o m e p a g e: http://jssp.reviste.ubbcluj.ro Analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is among the most widely used multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods that have been employed by researchers in various scientific areas all over the world to find the most appropriate solutions for complex and multi- variable problems. Despite the popularity of this method, there is no scientometric study on AHP applications in the literature. To fill this gap, the present study aims to present a scientometric analysis on the use of AHP for various applications, in general, and particularly for making the best decisions when dealing with urban management. Current scientific trends in this area were also identified and presented through an in-depth analysis of the findings regarding contributing countries, journals and authors. In addition, the main keywords introduced to the field and the existing categories were explored and identified. Results demonstrated that out of the 37,000 scientific works (including journal articles, proceedings, books, etc.) published so far on the employment of AHP in various fields, only 7% contributed to the urban affair management issues, whilst China and Iran hold the highest share. Results also indicated that AHP has been efficiently combined with Geographic Information System (GIS) to address the scientific needs in this area. This paper also provides recommendations for relevant future studies.