A hybrid GIS-MCDM approach for multi-level risk assessment and corresponding effective criteria in optimal solar...

This study aims to propose a hybrid method for suitability assessment with different risk levels to construct solar power plants (CSPPs) in southern Iran. The fuzzy-analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and fuzzy were applied to forecast and determine the suitable location for CSPPs. To extract suitable location maps with different risk levels for CSPPs, ordered weighted averaging (OWA) was implemented. In addition, the best subset regression method was used to determine the most effective factors in CSPPs. Based on the results of the fuzzy-AHP method, 42% of the southern regions of the area was suitable for CSPPs. Based on the results of the OWA method, the most suitable areas were located in the north and south in all of the risk areas with increasing values. The results demonstrated that the FCM and sub-clustering approaches can accurately predict land suitability classes (LSCs) for CSPPs. Moreover, the best subsets regression (BSR) results showed that distance to power transmission line (PTL) and temperature exhibited the strongest correlation. Finally, receiver operating characteristics (ROC) were used to determine the accuracy of these methods. The results showed that the area under the curve (AUC) values were highly accurate (AUC_Fuzzy-AHP = 85.0%, AUC_OWA = 83.0%).