GIS-based MCDM Approach for Wind Farm Site Selection - A Case Study

Multi-scale offshore wind farm site selection decision framework based on GIS, MCDM and meta-heuristic algorithm

Introduction: The electricity generated from nuclear plants and petroleum-based products has a negative influence on the environment as a whole. It has shown the utility to search out and promote the utilization of renewable, environmentally friendly, and sustainable energy sources such as solar, wind, and geothermal. Nowadays, Wind energy resource has quickly emerged as the world’s fastest-growing energy source.Methods: However, the selection of the most suitable places for developing a wind farm is a crucial challenge that can be seen as a problem of site selection, which involves numerous conflicting variables. Therefore, it is classified as an MCDM (multi-criteria decision-making) problem. The main objective of this research is to determine the best locations in Burundi for the installation of wind farms. The Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) was used to weigh the criteria considering their relative importance. This study considers several key factors when determining the optimal location for a wind farm. These factors include wind speed, slope, proximity to the grid network, distance to roads, and land use/land cover (LULC). Furthermore, a geographic information system (GIS) is utilized to generate the final suitability wind farm locations map.Results and Discussion: The obtained results indicate that 20.91% of the whole study area is suitable nevertheless, only 1.96% is tremendously suitable for wind turbine placement. The western part of Burundi is the optimal area for constructing a wind farm, and the most is in Lake Tanganyika.

Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographical Information System (GIS) play a crucial role to understand the division of groundwater, an important resource of water supply all over the world. In this present study, groundwater potential and recharge zone maps, are delineated for Loni and Morahi watersheds, Unnao and Rae Bareli district, Uttar Pradesh, India using RS, GIS and Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) techniques. The Satty’s Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) is used as a MCDM technique to normalise the weights of various thematic layers and their classes for delineating the groundwater potential and recharge zone maps. Thematic layers were integrated using weighted overlay in a GIS environment to generate groundwater potential and recharge zone maps. The output potential map is further classified into five zones on the basis of their histograms, viz., ‘very poor’, ‘poor’, ‘good’, ‘very good’ and ‘excellent’. The area falling in the excellent zone is about 150.93 km2 (7.06 % of the total study area), which covers a major portion of the Ganga river. It discriminates the areas where the terrain is suitable for groundwater storage. However, the area falling in the very poor zone is about 372.03 km2 (17.42 % of the total study area) and covers the Loni river south-eastern portion and some areas in north-eastern sides. Groundwater recharge map is classified into four zones namely; ‘most suitable’, ‘moderately suitable’, ‘poorly suitable’ and ‘not suitable’. Yield data of the 40 pumping wells are used to verify the groundwater potential zone map, and the results were found to be good.

Optimized landfill site selection for municipal solid waste by integrating GIS and multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) technique, Hossana town, southern Ethiopia

In recent years an increasing number of countries have implemented policy measures to promote renewable energy. However, the most important problem that the policy makers face with is the conflicting linguistic terms and subjective opinions on energy and environment policy. As the environmental policy and energy policy always go hand in hand, it is quite clear that wind as a renewable resource should be competitive with conventional power generation sources. From technical, environmental, socio-economical and socio-political standpoint, wind power is the most deserving of all of the cleaner energy production options (geothermal, solar, tidal, biomass, hydro) for more widespread deployment. Although wind power is a never ending green resource, assessment of environmental risks and impactswhich comprise the backbone of environmental policyin the context of specific projects or sites often are necessary to explicate and weigh the environmental trade-offs that are involved. In the case of wind farms, a number of turbines (ranging from about 250 kW to 750 kW) are connected together to generate large amounts of power. Apart from the constraints resulting from the number of turbines, any site selection should think over the technical, economic, social, environmental and political aspects. Each aspect uses criteria for its own evaluation. Decision making by using multi criteria decision analysis is an attractive solution for obtaining an integrated decision making result. Although Lee et al. (2009), Kaya and Kahraman (2010) and Tegou et al. (2010) has studied wind farm site selection by using different kinds of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Cheng’s extent analysis of Fuzzy AHP (FAHP) is used in this study and a holistic hierarchy were developed. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is a multi-criteria decision making tool to deal with complex, unstructured and multi-attribute problems. This method is distinguished from other multi-criteria methods in three ways: I. Construction of the hierarchy structure II. Pairwise comparisons of different criteria III. Weighing with respective to the overall objective. In AHP, decision makers quantify the importance of criteria by using Cheng’s 1-9 scale. To overcome the disadvantage of reluctant and inconsistent comparison judgments, fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) might be used on each factor to determine the weight of fuzziness of its attributes. Hierarchy structure diagram of wind farm site selection is given in Figure 1. This study aims to apply the FAHP to find priority sequence of alternatives and obtain the key success factors for the selection of appropriate sites of wind farms.

One of the most important recent challenges in solid waste management throughout the world is site selection of sanitary landfill. Commonly, because of simultaneous effects of social, environmental, and technical parameters on suitability of a landfill site, landfill site selection is a complex process and depends on several criteria and regulations. This study develops a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) process, which combines geographic information system (GIS) analysis with a fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP), to determine suitable sites for landfill construction in Iranshahr County, Iran. The GIS was used to calculate and classify selected criteria and FAHP was used to assess the criteria weights based on their effectiveness on selection of potential landfill sites. Finally, a suitability map was prepared by overlay analyses and suitable areas were identified. Four suitability classes within the study area were separated, including high, medium, low, and very low suitability areas, which represented 18%, 15%, 55%, and 12% of the study area, respectively.

MCDM (multi-criteria decision making) techniques are used to choose the best alternative among the relevant ones and rank the others. In this research, MCDM techniques were used to choose and rank the best places for constructing storage dams in Iran. To achieve this goal, the relevant information and data about dam construction situations were collected. Then, the recommended places for constructing storage dams were ranked by using MCDM techniques and according to the most suitable criteria which have been chosen based on experts’ opinions. To rank dam constructing project, three MCDM techniques, i.e., TOPSIS, AHP, and DEMATEL, were used. The results showed that the application of MCDM models by putting emphasis on economic, social, political, and technical criteria enables government and watershed managers to choose the best alternative(s) for constructing a storage dam.

Over the past decade, Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) has become a foundational tool in energy system design. Numerous technical methodologies and algorithms are available for evaluating and designing energy systems, optimizing either single or multiple criteria. MCDM aids decision-makers (DMs) in solving complex problems, such as site and supplier selection, ranking, and assessment. This paper provides a comprehensive review of both historical and contemporary MCDM techniques referenced in the literature. India is a rapidly developing and highly populated country with a high demand for energy to sustain its economic growth. To meet this demand, the Indian government want to achieve a target to increase the share of renewable energy upto 40% of the total installed capacity by year 2030. This target is a clear indication of the potential for hybrid renewable energy in India. We select solar and wind energy sources among various renewable energy sources based on various study that choose the optimal site selection criteria among them. we provide an overview of recent research on the application of MCDM for the selection of renewable hybrid power plants and identify that social factor is one of the main criteria that play a crucial role in site selection. Several MCDM methods have been applied to the selection of renewable hybrid power plants and compare them for optimal result. The use of sustainable MCDM techniques can help in the evaluation of the suitability of the sites based on multiple criteria. It increases the flexibility and sensitivity of the decisionmaking efforts in such type of approach. This approach allows to comprehensively and effectively assess and tackle the impending issues in the field of renewable energy. These techniques can use in site selection in other industry.

Identification of groundwater potential recharge zones in a Tunisian anthropogenic coastal region: Insights from multi-criteria decision-making techniques

Roles of geospatial technology in eco-industrial park site selection: State–of–the-art review

Groundwater is an essential part of our life support system and a change in the quality of groundwater may affect human health, mapping of groundwater contamination is an important tool for groundwater protection and management. The present study figures out groundwater quality suitability for drinking by adopting Geographical Information System (GIS) and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) Techniques. The Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) is employed to find the weightage of various parameters and reclassification along with weighted overlay tools in ArcGIS software is used. A total 18 samples of groundwater were collected from different wards of Agartala Municipality and various water quality parameters of collected samples were tested in the laboratory. It was found that only 24.24% of AMC area is having potable groundwater and 75.76% of AMC area is not potable for drinking and iron content in more than 96.25% of area is above permissible limit prescribed by BIS (2012) and WHO (2011) and for pH 22.09% of the area having value less than permissible limit.

The Middle East region, with its arid and semi-arid climate, is one of the regions most affected by climate change and water scarcity. To address the severe issue of water scarcity in the western region of Iraq, this study identifies optimal potential rainwater harvesting (RWH) locations. Geographic Information System (GIS) and multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) techniques were employed to generate themed layers for RWH. The nine primary criteria considered were rainfall, elevation, slope, stream order, soil texture, land use, groundwater depth, distance from the lake, and runoff depth. A weighted overlay assessment was used to identify probable RWH locations. The analytical hierarchical process was used to weight criteria depending on the study region, hydrological and socioeconomic parameters, and literature. The consistency ratio (CR = 3.16%) was calculated to validate the optimum weights of the comparison components, from which it was found that the weights assigned to each criterion were appropriate for comparative purposes. The results indicated that the optimum location (very high suitability) for RWH is mostly in middle regions of the study area, covering 286 km2 (13%), while for the other categories, high suitability is at 23% (498 km2), medium suitability at 29% (636 km2), low suitability at 21% (462 km2), and very low suitability at 14% (305 km2). Sensitivity analysis was used to identify the relative importance of the parameters and determine how each of the nine criteria influences the optimal RWH sites. These findings can assist decision makers and planners in devising strategies to mitigate the effects of climate change and increase any reclaimed area for agriculture.

This study aims at mapping of the Right-of-Way (ROW) acquired from KP292 Escravous at Mojoda, Epe, Epe Local Government Area (LGA) to Lekki Free Trade Zone Area, Ibeju-Lekki LGA, both in Lagos State, Nigeria, for the construction of gas pipeline networks. The total distance covered is 52.6 km of which 5.6 km is presented for this study. The methodological tools used are Remote Sensing, Geographical Information System (GIS) and spatial analysis techniques for the assessment of the terrain, land use, and environmental constraints along a pipeline corridor, identifying suitable routes and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) and Least-Cost Path Analysis (LCPA) to determine the most efficient pipeline alignment. This study provides geospatial data (coordinates and elevations i.e. X, Y, Z) of locations and features (artificial and natural) within the ROW; the planimetry and longitudinal profile of the route for the purpose of designing and planning for the construction of the proposed gas pipeline route. The height of the centre line at the starting point 0+000 of the project at Mojoda is 48.120 m. The highest point on the centre line ground level for the entire route is 49.100 m at 0+100 chainage; and the lowest height of 2.400 m is recorded at 5+600 chainage. The accuracy of the traverse and levelling is 1/36,000 and + 0.011 respectively. The results obtained show the amount of cut and fill that is required by the Engineer in the process of construction and laying of the gas pipelines; and the cost implications for the construction of the project including compensation. Therefore, it can be concluded that geospatial data is the bedrock for the acquisition of ROW for the construction of gas pipeline.

Air pollution has become a serious concern across the world in the last few decades. In specific cities, the air quality index value had changed from very unhealthy to a hazardous level of health concern. Air pollution has a serious impact on daily lives in those cities. Monitoring of air pollution is becoming necessary these days. Air quality monitoring stations are installed to get the air pollution data, which indicates in the air quality index (AQI) value. In order to contain a proper air quality index (AQI) value, it is essential to locate the air quality monitoring stations in the appropriate place of the study area. Several techniques were being used for site selection of air quality monitoring stations for the last few decades. In this short review, all such techniques have been studied systematically, and comprehensive analysis has been reported for further use by the scientific community and policymakers. In this study, the methods used in the site selection of air quality monitoring stations were categorized into four groups. (1) Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) techniques; (2) Geographical Information System (GIS); (3) hybrid techniques; and (4) miscellaneous. In the site selection of air quality monitoring stations, the decision-makers should consider various parameters based on the study area. While considering various parameters, the problem solving becomes complex. At this point, MCDM techniques, GIS, and Hybrid techniques are found to be helpful tools for the decision-makers.

This paper aims to develop a geospatial information system based land evaluation method for rainfed farming. To produce geospatial information of potential areas for sorghum using Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) approach. The land suitability is based on the biophysical and soil factors. The analysis aimed at the production of geospatial information displayed in maps and a graph showing potential areas that are suitable for rainfed farming. A fuzzy modeling decision analysis tool integrated with map algebra expression ADD (+) Geographical Information System (GIS) analysis operation was used to combine the information from several criteria to form a single suitability map. The results showed the land parcels that are suitable, marginal suitable and non-suitable for sorghum. The suitability map was overlaid with the existing land use to identify areas that are plowed for sorghum that are on suitable areas.