Mapping the suitability of North Africa for green hydrogen production: an application of a multi-criteria spatial decision support system combining GIS and AHP for Tunisia

Table 1 The exclusion criteria adopted in the assessment

Exclusion criterion	Area excluded if	Source	Buffering area
GHI (Global Horizontal Irradiation)	GHI < 4.5 kWh/m²/day	Global Solar Atlas 2.0 [105]
Slope	Slope > 5°	DEM-SRTM NASA [106]
Water bodies	Water areas and water lines	Open Africa dataset [107]	Buffer of 500 m
Protected areas and Other Effective Conservation Measures areas	Biologic reserves, sites of ecologic and biologic interest, protected maritime areas, natural parks, hunting reserves, UNESCO sites	World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) [108]	Buffer of 500 m
Populated areas	Populated places points and polygons	OpenStreetMap (OSM) [109]	Villages: buffer of 1 km; towns: buffer of 2 km; cities: buffer of 4 km
Other land uses	Not bare areas neither areas with scrubs	Esri 2020 LandCover [110]	Buffer of 100 m
Transport and power infrastructure	Railroads, roads, airports, electricity infrastructure, natural gas infrastructure	OpenStreetMap (OSM) [109], WFP OSM [111],	Buffer of 100 m

ISSN: 2192-0567