Multicriteria decision analysis for sustainable data centers location

Data Centers (DCs) are complex organizational and technical infrastructures that assure the performance and reliability of modern information and communication systems. The high installation and operations costs of DCs and the stringent requirements regarding reliability and safety require a close attention to the location of this type of facility. This paper proposes a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) approach for identifying the most interesting locations to install sustainable DCs, taking into account technical, social, economic and environmental dimensions. For each of these main dimensions, the evaluation was formulated as a multi-criteria sorting problem. These problems were analyzed using the outranking MCDA method ELECTRE TRI through the IRIS software, allowing for uncertainty about the criteria weights. The results are summarized in graphical form, without attempting to reduce such incommensurable dimensions to a single value.