Fuzzy Multi-Criteria Decision-Making for Power Plant Site Selection
Summary
Fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making (FMCDM) methods have emerged as a powerful tool for site selection of power plants, where complex environmental, economic, technical and social factors must be balanced under uncertainty. By incorporating fuzzy sets, these methods accommodate the imprecision inherent in expert judgements and diverse data sources. Typically, FMCDM frameworks integrate a geographic information system (GIS) to pre-screen feasible locations, followed by stages of criteria weighting and alternative ranking using approaches such as fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP), fuzzy preference programming, PROMETHEE II and TOPSIS. Recent advances include the use of interval type-2 fuzzy numbers and hybrid weighting techniques to enhance robustness. Applications span nuclear, hydrogen and renewable power plant projects worldwide, delivering flexible, transparent and reproducible site selection processes that align technical feasibility with environmental and socio-economic sustainability goals.
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Fuzzy Multi-Criteria Decision-Making for Power Plant Site Selection publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making for power plant site selection across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Fuzzy set: Mathematical construct representing data with imprecise boundaries, allowing degrees of membership between 0 and 1.
Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM): Analytical process for evaluating and prioritising alternatives across multiple, often conflicting, criteria.
Geographic Information System (GIS): Digital framework for capturing, analysing and visualising spatial data to inform site suitability.
Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP): Structured technique for deriving ratio scales from paired comparisons to determine criteria weights.
PROMETHEE II: Outranking method that ranks alternatives based on preference flows across multiple criteria.
Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS): Method that identifies solutions closest to the ideal and farthest from the nadir based on weighted criteria.
Interval Type-2 Fuzzy Number: Extension of fuzzy sets characterised by fuzzy membership functions to better model uncertainty in expert judgements.
References
- A two‐stage decision framework for inland nuclear power plant site selection based on GIS and type‐2 fuzzy PROMETHEE II: Case study in China. Energy Science & Engineering (2020).
- Site suitability-based spatial-weighted multicriteria analysis for nuclear power plants in Indonesia. Heliyon (2022).
- Hydrogen Power Plant Site Selection Under Fuzzy Multicriteria Decision-Making (FMCDM) Environment Conditions. Symmetry (2019).
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