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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ISPRS-Archives</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ISPRS-Archives</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">2194-9034</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/isprs-archives-L-4-W3-2026-1-2026</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Hybrid Expert–Machine Learning Weighting for GIS-Based Photovoltaic Suitability Mapping: A Spatial Robustness Assessment under Uncertainty</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Ali</surname>
<given-names>Kamran</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Clementini</surname>
<given-names>Eliseo</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Patrizi</surname>
<given-names>Roberto</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Villante</surname>
<given-names>Carlo</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Dept. of Industrial and Information Engineering and Economics, University of L’Aquila, Italy</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Rainbow Lab srl, Viale Giulio Cesare 94, 00192 Roma, Italy</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>29</day>
<month>09</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>L-4/W3-2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>8</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Kamran Ali et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/L-4-W3-2026/1/2026/isprs-archives-L-4-W3-2026-1-2026.html">This article is available from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/L-4-W3-2026/1/2026/isprs-archives-L-4-W3-2026-1-2026.html</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/L-4-W3-2026/1/2026/isprs-archives-L-4-W3-2026-1-2026.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/L-4-W3-2026/1/2026/isprs-archives-L-4-W3-2026-1-2026.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Geographic Information Systems and Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (GIS&amp;ndash;MCDM) workflows are widely used for photovoltaic (PV) site suitability mapping, but their outputs depend strongly on criterion weights, and many studies report deterministic suitability maps without testing whether priority zones remain stable under weight uncertainty. This study combines expert-derived weights from the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP, consistency ratio = 0.0142) with SHAP-based feature importance from an XGBoost model trained on 72 existing PV plants (ROC&amp;ndash;AUC = 0.9391) to construct a hybrid weighting scheme (&amp;alpha; = 0.7), applied through SAW, TOPSIS, and VIKOR to map PV suitability in the Province of L&amp;rsquo;Aquila, Italy. Spatial robustness is assessed using 1,000 Monte Carlo weight perturbations and Tornado-style sensitivity analysis. Results show a clear stability gradient across the aggregation methods, with mean coefficient of variation values of 0.046, 0.121, and 0.193 for SAW, TOPSIS, and VIKOR, respectively. The top-suitability probability maps identify spatially concentrated high-suitability cores that persist across the three methods, while the Tornado analysis shows that GHI, urban distance, and slope exert the strongest control on spatial stability: the same criteria for which expert-derived and data-driven weights disagree most. By distinguishing robust priority zones from sensitivity-prone areas and identifying the criteria that govern spatial stability, the framework provides a defensible, uncertainty-aware workflow for PV siting and spatial energy planning.</p>
</abstract>
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</article-meta>
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