Determination of suitable locations for the construction of gas power plant using multicriteria decision and Dempster-Shafer model in GIS

With the growth of the population, the development of industrial, agricultural and so on, the amount of gas demand has been increasing steadily. Supplying the required gas energy often involves the construction of new power plants. The construction of power plants has social, economic, political and environmental consequences. Given the impact of power plant location in the cost of production and transmission of energy, environment, and so on, the importance of selecting the right place for the construction of the power plant is obvious. Therefore, in this study, geographical information system (GIS) based fuzzy-analytic hierarchy process (AHP) as one of the multicriteria decision methods and Dempster-Shafer theory (DST) methods are used to determine suitable locations for construction of gas power plant in Esfahan province, southwest of Iran. Different layers including distance to pipeline, distance to road, lithology, distance to stream, elevation, slope, and land use are prepared using ArcGIS. Subsequently, the importance of each factor in determining gas power plant location is defined using membership function. In the fuzzy-AHP method, membership function fuzzy maps for each layer are prepared. The DST model in Matlab is also used. The method was applied with three levels of confidence 99.5%, 99%, and 95% with the results compare. The results with the fuzzy method showed that 9.57% of the study area is unsuitable for the gas power location. On the hand, the results of the DST model showed that unsuitable areas for the DST method occupy 10.36%, 13.01%, and 19.55% of study area for levels of confidence of 95%, 99%, and 99.5%, respectively.

Automated summary

This study uses GIS and fuzzy-AHP method as well as DST model to determine suitable locations for gas power plant construction in Esfahan province, Iran. The factors considered for power plant location include distance to pipeline and road, lithology, distance to stream, elevation, slope, and land use. The results from fuzzy-AHP method and DST model show that there are certain areas unsuitable for gas power plant construction at different levels of confidence.