Multicriteria decision support for the evaluation of electricity supply resilience: Exploration of interacting criteria

The resilience of an energy system and especially the national electricity supply is a complex and multidimensional concept, which is receiving growing attention at a European level. In particular, the increasing risks of extended electricity supply disruptions and/or severe electricity price fluctuations are stressing the need for an assessment of the European countries’ electricity supply resilience. This paper proposes an elaborative multicriteria decision support methodological framework, based on three major resilience dimensions, namely: “resist”, “restabilise” and “recover”. In total, 35 European countries are evaluated and ranked according to their performance on 17 interacting evaluation criteria. The overall evaluation of the countries is established based on a synergy of two complementary multicriteria decision aid (MCDA) methods. Specifically, the Choquet Integral is approached and assessed as an importance indicator to properly accommodate and incorporate the interacting criteria into the value system, negating therefore their arbitrary effects on the final benchmarking. Simultaneously, a procedure based on the Simos method supports the robust elicitation of the Choquet capacities. All preferential information required for the implementation of the MCDA framework has been elicited from an expert, highly knowledgeable of the European energy system. This research work aims to support energy policymakers in Europe and provide guidelines and areas for improvement at a country level.