Location of agricultural warehouses based on spatial multicriteria analysis

Abstract

Brazilian agribusiness is continuously seeking new technologies and arable areas for expansion. Often, the expansion often occurs without proper planning and integration with logistic system actors, especially in agricultural frontier regions like the MATOPIBA region. To improve investment decision-making, it is essential to plan the location of new bulk warehouses. This planning can facilitate a virtuous process that incorporates intermodality and environmental preservation aspects. The objective of this article is to evaluate whether a combination of locational criteria that consider environmental and intermodality aspects can identify the most suitable regions for the installation of subterminal warehouses. The methodology combines Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and geoprocessing techniques. The application of the method allowed ranking the candidate regions for the installation of warehouses. The results indicated three large areas suitable for the grain storage that together represent 12% of the study area. The conclusion of the research was that, in addition to economic aspects, the inclusion of environmental and logistics factors in the spatial location analysis promotes a more sustainable storage network, with well-positioned warehouses and less competition.

Keywords:
grains; logistic; multi-criteria analysis; geographic information system