GIS-Driven Regional Assessment for Sustainable Data Center Siting in the United Kingdom

This study presents a GIS-driven multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) framework for regional suitability screening of data center (DC) development in the United Kingdom. The methodology integrates spatial exclusion of constrained zones, raster standardization of climate and infrastructure indicators, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) weighting, and Weighted Linear Combination (WLC) to generate a national suitability surface at 1 km resolution. Climate indicators (temperature, air frost days, humidity, and solar radiation) and infrastructure and environmental constraint indicators (grid access, transport proximity, environmental protections, and population distribution) were standardized and combined within a GIS-based decision framework. Hard constraints such as protected areas and flood zones were applied through binary exclusion, while climatic and infrastructure factors were evaluated using weighted suitability scoring. Five candidate regions were identified from the suitability analysis: the Scottish Highlands, Northeast England, Southwest England (Cornwall), Northwest England, and Eastern England. These regions were further evaluated against key requirements including power infrastructure accessibility, workforce and connectivity availability, and exposure to environmental and hydro-climate constraints. The final comparison identified Lincolnshire as the most suitable region due to strong grid accessibility, favorable composite climate suitability, adequate population proximity, and limited overlap with protected areas. The proposed framework demonstrates how climate-driven cooling suitability can be integrated with infrastructure accessibility and environmental constraints within a unified spatial decision model for national-scale digital infrastructure planning.