Roles of geospatial technology in eco-industrial park site selection: State–of–the-art review

Globally, most industrial parks that have not gone through a proper site selection process have been neglected or underutilised and such active sites tend to burn a lot of fuels and generate greenhouse gases. Technology must be used to conduct on-site investigations of the spatial and non-spatial factors of industrial parks, especially the emerging Eco-Industrial Park (EIP). The paper seeks to appraise the global application, capability and acceptability of Geographic Information System (GIS) and Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) tools in the EIP sites selection and planning. Also, to identify the benefits of mixing MCDM tools when integrating with GIS. There have been some reviews on the use of GIS and MCDM methods, but so far, there is none on the role of GIS and MCDM methods in EIP site selection. Geospatial and MCDM tools can be used to carefully select EIP sites, where materials and energy can be shared to achieve cleaner production, reduce environmental pollution and promote sustainable development. To understand the usage of these tools and their role in the EIP site selection process, a critical review of twenty-two papers published from 2007 to 2020 indexed by Google Scholar, Springer, IEEE Xplore and Web of Science have been developed for the first time. The articles are classified based on country/region, journal of publication, year and citations of publication, the authors and technologies applied. The results show that most studies on EIP site selection come from Iran and China. The Journal of Environmental Monitoring and Assessment has the highest number of articles published at 28%. The highest number of articles was published in 2014 with 312 citations. GIS and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) topped the technologies used, accounting for 42% and 24% respectively, and hybrid tools 34%. As categorised by criteria content, there was an overlap of criteria in most journals. Though, water bodies, utilities, infrastructure, and natural characteristics were prominent. Renewable energy resources were not given attention by most researchers, and risk assessment was absent from the site selection literature. A blend of traditional MCDM tools constitutes the state-of-the-art tools, and when these are combined with GIS in EIP site surveys, they execute to obtain actual results. Future EIP site selection that is integrated with risk assessment is envisioned to be industry 4.0 (4IR)-driven through a combination of GIS and artificial intelligence, and the recently developed MCDM hybrid modules.