Defining Priority Areas for the Sustainable Development of the Desalination Industry in Chile: A GIS Multi-Criteria Analysis Approach

Abstract

The climate crisis is rapidly provoking water scarcity in several areas of the planet, where an exponential growth of the seawater desalination industry is expected. In this context, multiple efforts are currently under development to reduce potential impacts and promote the sustainability of this industry. The selection of a suitable site for a desalination plant is critical to ensure operational continuity and the environmental sustainability of its processes, optimizing the plant’s productive performance and thus safeguarding water security for final users. In this study, we apply a GIS-based Multi-Criteria Analysis (GIS-MCA) approach to explore and assess potential areas suitable for the construction and operation of desalination plants in Chile. Different environmental, social, and technical criteria were evaluated and weighted by expert criteria using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) methodology. From a total of 114,450 km2 analyzed, only 4.54% of the territory was classified as highly suitable, demonstrating the scarcity of space available to meet the growth expectations for the industry. These results suggest that GIS-based analysis provides a practical solution to determine suitable areas for developing desalination plants, highlighting the need to define priority areas for the sustainable development of the desalination industry in Chile with the required capacity to reach the national water security goals for the following decades.