Multiobjective location analysis of regional energy facility siting problems

Abstract

This report is one of a continuing series of policy analysis and model development studies in the area of energy facility siting prepared by the Brookhaven National Laboratory Regional Energy Studies Program. At Oak Ridge National Laboratory a sophisticated approach based on political interaction analysis has been developed as an adjunct to their siting model, allowing resolution of regional siting issues in the context of a prediction of political feasibility (Yaffee, 1976). And at Brookhaven, emphasis has been on the development of operations research approaches that could interface with the ensemble of energy systems analysis models resident at BNL's National Center for Analysis of Energy Systems, and the regional environmental impact models at the BNL Atmospheric and Oceanographic Sciences divisions (Meier, 1975). As an initial step in the development of such an operations research approach to regional siting policy analysis, this report presents an exploratory analysis of two areas of inquiry that appear especially promising. The first, examined in Chapter II, rests on the application of location theory, an area of inquiry that has seen a strong resurgence in the recent mathematical geography and regional economics literature as a result of its ability to address a rather large number of facility planning problems, in both the private and public sectors. The second area of inquiry, the focus of Chapter III, is multi-objective programming, a formalization of the notion that siting decision making is an adversary process, in which a resolution of conflicting objectives is the key issue. Multi-objective location modeling, a merger of the two areas of inquiry, may provide a useful analytical framework for regional energy planning. The Regional Energy Facility Location Model, which is based on such a merger, is presented in Chapter IV, and various extensions of the basic model formulation are presented in Appendices.

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