Biogas plants site selection integrating Multicriteria Decision Aid methods and GIS techniques: A case study in a Portuguese region

• We present a spatial multi-criteria methodology to decide biogas plants siting.
• Methodology combines ELECTRE TRI with GIS for spatial analysis.
• Constraints and environmental, economic and social factors have been identified.
• The methodology is illustrated with application to a case study in the EDM Region.
• A suitability map was generated, identifying the most suitable biogas plant locations.

This work addresses the problem of determining the most suitable sites for locating biogas plants using dairy manure as feedstock, specifically in the Entre-Douro-e-Minho Region in Portugal. A Multicriteria Spatial Decision Support System is developed to tackle this complex multicriteria decision-making problem, involving constraints and many environmental, economic, safety, and social factors. The approach followed combines the use of a Geographic Information System (GIS) to manage and process spatial information with the flexibility of Multicriteria Decision Aid (MCDA) to assess factual information (e.g. soil type, slope, infrastructures) with more subjective information (e.g. expert opinion). The MCDA method used is ELECTRE TRI, an outranking-type method that yields a classification of the possible alternatives. The results of the performed analysis show that the use of ELECTRE TRI is suitable to address real-world problems of land suitability, leading towards a flexible and integrated assessment.