Mineral prospectivity mapping (MPM) is a Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) task that prioritizes mineralized areas from high to low potential through methodologies that deal with data fusion problems. The primary purpose of this research is to produce a mineral potential map of the Saqez area in Kurdistan, Western Iran, to delimit the promising areas for subsequent studies in gold exploration. This area is well-known for its orogenic gold occurrences where several deposits/prospects have been discovered recently. To seek blind targets in the region, three evidential criteria, including geological, remote sensing, and geochemical layers, were used to generate the gold potential map of the Saqez area. The technique used to gain the weights of evidential layers is the fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (fuzzy AHP). Regarding this technique, at least three expert decision-makers (DMs) are required to run the method, where the results have superiority compared to the conventional AHP method with high values of uncertainty. The obtained weights of criteria were used to integrate all indicator layers incorporated in geospatial datasets through three methods, including conventional VIKOR, modified VIKOR, and multi-class index overlay. In order to validate the final MPMs, the predication ratio of seven gold prospects along with favorable zones were calculated as an efficiency index, where it was 85.65, 85.29, and 78.47 %, respectively. It proved the applicability of the VIKOR approach in gold potential mapping in comparison to the multi-class index overlay. The southwestern portions of the prospecting zone were highlighted as the most favorable potential area for gold occurrences.
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