A study on offshore wind farm siting criteria using a novel interval-valued fuzzy-rough based Delphi method

Area of Science:

• Environmental Science
• Renewable Energy Engineering
• Decision Science

Background:

• Offshore wind farms are crucial for renewable energy goals.
• Optimal site selection is complex, influenced by numerous criteria.
• Existing methods may not fully address decision-making uncertainties.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine the importance of various criteria for offshore wind farm site selection.
• To apply a novel decision-making approach to assess these criteria.
• To provide insights for future offshore wind farm development.

Main Methods:

• Literature review to identify 42 influential criteria.
• International expert survey (34 experts, 17 countries) on criterion importance.
• Application of a novel Decision Making-Level Based Weight Assessment (LBWA) approach using interval-valued fuzzy-rough numbers (IVFRN).

Main Results:

• Quantified the importance and relevance of 42 criteria for offshore wind farm site selection.
• Demonstrated the effectiveness of the LBWA approach in handling uncertainty and subjectivity.
• Provided a ranked understanding of influential factors for site selection.

Conclusions:

• The study successfully established the relative importance of criteria for offshore wind farm site selection.
• The LBWA method offers a robust framework for complex, uncertain decision problems.
• Findings are valuable for optimizing future offshore wind farm planning and development.