Ranking of Routes for Electrical Transmission Lines Using GIS and Fuzzy Logic

Selecting a route is the first step in building a new electrical transmission line. The most common practice of selecting a route involves ranking possible route options, which is a complex process that demands many decision considerations to be taken into account. The ranking process is mainly done manually by humans using printed maps and field surveys that makes it time-consuming and prone to errors. In this paper, we propose a methodology to automate the process of ranking routes for an electrical transmission line using Geographic Information System (GIS) and Fuzzy Inference System (FIS). We evaluate the effectiveness of the methodology by comparing the FIS based results with industrial results of an actual project in Saskatoon, Canada. The preliminary results are very promising. Out of five route options, our methodology ranks the top three options correctly, and it successfully identifies the least preferred route options.