A decision support system for site selection of large-scale infrastructure facilities using natural language

Abstract

Spatial problems are often characterised by incomplete information, multiple conflicting evaluation criteria and a heterogeneous group of decision-makers. Implementation of existing analytical decision–making methods in a Spatial Decision Support System has been characterised by difficulties when dealing with uncertainty, criteria standardization, and group decision-making where there is no consensus. Another problem is the real or perceived difficulty of using such systems, leading to poor uptake by decision-makers. This paper discusses the development of a spatial decision support system (SDSS) using a new natural language approach to mitigate the abovementioned difficulties. The system is designed to aid site selection for large-scale infrastructure facilities at a strategic level, using a fuzzy multicriteria, multi-decision-maker framework and linguistic methods. We describe the theoretical basis of our approach, and its practical implementation in a GIS-based System. A real world site selection problem involving the location of a new industrial facility at Brisbane Airport (Australia) is also worked through.