New robust multi-criteria decision-making method for wind farm location problems

Offshore wind farm (OWF) location selection is a complex decision-making task that must balance economic, social, environmental, and technical considerations under uncertainty. This study addresses the siting problem in the Baltic Sea by evaluating seven OWF projects against 30 multidimensional criteria clustered into five domains: Location, Market, Social Benefits, Economic Benefits, and Financial Costs. To navigate the conflicting and uncertain nature of these criteria, we developed RVikor – an extended version of the VIKOR method, along with a comprehensive decision-support framework. The framework incorporates systematic robustness analysis to explore the sensitivity of rankings to changes in decision parameters, including criteria weights, compromise strategies, and expert judgments. Application of RVikor allows to provide not only a baseline ranking of the projects, but also assess the stability and resilience of the obtained results under various scenarios. Further benchmarking of the results against established multi-criteria decision analysis methods such as TOPSIS and PROMETHEE II confirmed the reliability of the proposed approach. The findings reveal meaningful trade-offs: some alternatives consistently perform well across a broad range of assumptions, while others are highly sensitive to particular perspectives or criteria. The ability to flexibly switch between consensus- and veto-oriented strategies further supports decision-makers in aligning results with different sustainability philosophies. Overall, this work demonstrated that incorporating structured robustness analysis enhanced the credibility and interpretability of OWF site selection decisions, leading to more sustainable decisions accounting for uncertainties.