Multi-Criteria Site Selection

Multi-criteria site selection combines multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) with geographic information systems to choose where to locate a facility or land use when many, often conflicting, spatial criteria matter at once. Synthesized as GIS-based MCDA by Jacek Malczewski, it standardizes each criterion layer to a common scale, assigns the criteria importance weights — frequently via Saaty's Analytic Hierarchy Process — and combines them through weighted overlay to produce a suitability surface that ranks every candidate location. The method makes an inherently messy, value-laden siting decision explicit, reproducible, and auditable.