Beyond Composite Suitability: Evidence-Aware Pareto Frontiers for Geothermal Exploration Decisions in Colombia

Regional geothermal screening often collapses prospectivity, territorial constraints, institutional support, and data maturity into a compensatory score, obscuring why an area ranks highly. We develop an evidence-aware, non-compensatory framework for Colombia. Eleven criteria were standardized at 300 m and weighted using Best–Worst Method judgments from 15 experts. Results for 23 registered areas were decomposed into geoscientific prospectivity, territorial compatibility, institutional alignment, and evidence gap. Institutional alignment remained a contextual implementation dimension but was excluded from Pareto dominance. Paired frontiers distinguish advancement screening from information-acquisition screening. Robustness was evaluated through 10,000 expert-panel bootstrap replicates, 81 transformations of four dominant geoscientific layers, and directed missing-data tests. Cubarral, Nereidas, Iza, Paipa, and Santa Rosa formed the advancement frontier, which was unchanged across all transformation scenarios; joint robustness frequencies ranged from 83.4% to 100%. However, neutral score-3 imputation retained only Cubarral, Nereidas, and Santa Rosa (Jaccard = 0.600). Eight of nine learning-front members persisted across all transformation scenarios, while Santa Rosa was transformation-sensitive. Apiay ranked second in every expert bootstrap but belonged to neither frontier, showing that rank stability does not imply non-dominance. The framework separates preference uncertainty from evidence-model and missing-data assumptions while providing screening sets requiring costed feasibility appraisal.