Siting a wind farm in Oregon: Considering a hierarchical decision model with four scenarios

This paper primarily serves two purposes: first, it looks to develop a methodology that takes scenarios and certain hard-to-measure intangibles such as politics, social impact, and even religion; as well as more tangible and measurable variables such as environmental impacts, cost and types of materials, storage and wind turbine technologies, to name a few, that then could be used as input to a decision-making model on where to build a wind farm. The hierarchical decision model (HDM) then analyzes these variables, based on an independent judging panel, in order to come up with a recommendation for the best site on where to build the wind farm. Second, the preliminary discussion of this paper serves as a prototype of developing a methodology that might one day serve as part of an overall comprehensive energy policy for the State of Oregon.