Application of geographical information system to site selection of small run-of-river hydropower project by considering engineering/economic/environmental criteria and social impact

In the process of site selection of a small run-of-river hydropower project in Thailand, some problems are addressed as follows: the accessibility of the possible sites which are mostly located in rural and mountainous areas, the large amount of data required, and the lack of participation of the local people living nearby. In order to cope with these problems, this study proposes a new method to select feasible sites of small run-of-river hydropower projects by using Geographic Information System (GIS) technology. A combination of engineering, economic, and environmental criteria, as well as social impact is employed in this study. The selected study area is the upper Nan river basin situated in the north of Thailand. For the engineering criteria, the project locations are found by GIS in visual basic platform, and then economic evaluations of the selected projects are performed. Next, the environmental parameters are used to rank the projects by total weighted scores. Finally, a social impact study at the potential sites is conducted based on the public participation process, i.e. questionnaire survey and focus group discussions. The applicability of the proposed method is verified by the results of site selection of the small hydropower projects located on the Nan river basin in Thailand. This case study can be the model for the process of site selection of similar projects.