INDUSTRIAL SITE SELECTION: AN INTELLIGENT GIS- BAESD DECISION ANALYSIS APPROACH (original) (raw)

Building a new capital improvement facility is a major, long-term investment. Site selection is a critical decision made by private and public owners that affects a wide range of activities ranging from land use planning to sitting of industrial facilities. Determining facilities locations is critical to the success and failure of such investments. The selection of an industrial site involves a complex array of critical factors involving economic, social, technical, and environmental issues. Site selection is the process of finding locations that meet desired conditions set by the selection criteria. In such a process, manipulation of spatial data and satisfaction of multiple criteria are essential to the success of decision-making. Because of the complexity of the problems a number of tools must be deployed to arrive at the proper solution. A proposed approach is presented in which Expert Systems, Geographic information systems and Multi-criteria decision making techniques are integrated systematically in solving industrial site selection problems. In addition, the paper presents a comprehensive discussion of the site selection process, characteristics and tools.