E.S.I.A. and environmental audit for small hydro power projects – M.C.D.M. approach

The purpose of determining environmental or social impact significance for a project or doing environmental audits is to place value on its environmental and socio-economic effects. E.S.I.A. and E.A. are the processes that judges whether impact significance is acceptable or not in accordance with the scientific facts regarding environment, ecology and socio-economic effects described in “Environmental Impact Statements” (E.I.S.). The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of the Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) or Fuzzy Logic approach for E.S.I.A. or E.A. decision making and its usefulness for experts, environmental engineers or managers by illustrating its application both manually and by software to environmental performance appraisals of renewable energy generation. Article illustrates an example of MCDM or Fuzzy Logic based E.S.I.A. or E.A. of small hydro power generation in Himalayan Region in order to prove the usefulness of the model. To the best of the authors knowledge this novel MCDM or Fuzzy Logic approach of E.S.I.A. or E.A for small hydro power generation is absent in environmental fluid mechanics literatures due to its assessment complexity.