The Environmental Impact Study (EIS) is a key formal document in the Portuguese
Environmental Assessment context procedure, which is required for an engineering project.
This is the outcome of several methodological evaluation assessments and activities undertaken
towards the identification of environmental impacts. It should present the mitigation
measures and the monitoring plan. If there are several alternatives, the “most -environmental
-friendly” should be indicated. This work proposes a methodology to support the
Assessment procedure above in a GIS integrating environment. This combination of GIS
standard functionalities with the implementation of specific external models constitutes a
relevant contribution towards the development of a specific SDSS -MC in the environmental
domain. The methodology includes the design of an interactive routine developed in Visual
Basic in order to support the Screening/ Scoping, the Significance Evaluation, and Selection
of the Environmental Indicators. The GIS functionalities are used to predict impacts and
measure related indicators that are used as criteria, within the multicriteria analysis module,
based on the ELECTRE III method. This will provide the user with a sorted list of possible
alternatives, from the “most -environmental - friendly” down to the least. The methodology
was applied to the case study of a motorway in the west -center of Portugal.
Authors
Gonçalves, Agostinho Jordão
Rodrigues, João Coutinho
Sousa, Nuno
Keywords
Estudos de impacte ambiental;,
Avaliação ambiental em infraestruturas de transporte;,
Avaliação multicritério;,
Sistemas de informação geográfica (SIG).,
Environmental impact study;,
Environmental assessment in transport infrastructure;,
Multicriteria evaluation;,
Geographical information system (SIG).