The highly dispersed nature of biomass sources and limited tools with which to exploit geographically explicit data to minimise delivery costs are major barriers to the initiation of biomass energy projects. This paper presents a geographical information system based approach in combining suitability analysis, spatial biomass assessment and optimality analysis to locate plants for bioelectricity generation with sustainable availability of single or multiple biomass. First, fuzzy multi-criteria analysis was employed to identify the suitability of plants’ locations, using local economic, environmental, and social sustainability criteria. As well, the availability of multiple types of biomass was assessed. Biomass availability information and land use data were combined to generate high-resolution spatial biomass information with user-defined resolution. Next, a location-allocation model was used to identify optimal locations for biomass energy plants by considering both road networks and spatially distributed biomass availability. Additionally, different scenarios were analysed to optimise plant sizes, biomass delivery costs and total number of plants for the region under both single biomass and multi-biomass approaches. The developed model was demonstrated for a Queensland case study using sugarcane waste alone and combined sugarcane waste and forest waste. Results using sugarcane waste in Queensland identified optimally located plants with sizes from 57 MW to 185 MW and average transportation distances of 27 km to 64 km. By combining sugarcane waste with forest waste, the plant sizes increased, depending on spatial biomass availability. This methodology can be extended to evaluate optimum configuration and optimum combination of different biomass types at a plant level.

生物质资源的高度分散的性质以及利用地理上明确的数据以最小化交付成本的有限工具是启动生物质能源项目的主要障碍。本文提出了一种基于地理信息系统的方法，该方法将适宜性分析，空间生物量评估和最优性分析相结合，以定位具有单一或多种生物量可持续利用性的生物发电设备。首先，采用模糊的多准则分析，使用当地的经济，环境和社会可持续性准则来确定工厂所在地的适合性。同样，评估了多种生物质的可用性。生物量可利用性信息和土地利用数据相结合，以生成具有用户定义分辨率的高分辨率空间生物量信息。接下来，通过考虑道路网络和空间分布的生物量可用性，使用位置分配模型来确定生物质能源厂的最佳位置。此外，分析了不同的情景，以在单一生物量和多种生物量方法下优化该地区的植物规模，生物量传递成本和植物总数。在昆士兰州的案例研究中证明了开发的模型，该案例研究仅使用甘蔗废料并将甘蔗废料和森林废料合并使用。在昆士兰州使用甘蔗废料的结果确定了位置最佳的电厂，规模从57兆瓦到185兆瓦不等，平均运输距离为27公里到64公里。通过将甘蔗废料与森林废料结合起来，可增加植物的大小，具体取决于空间生物量的可用性。该方法可以扩展为在工厂级别评估不同生物质类型的最佳配置和最佳组合。