Energy planning and environmental management with the information and decision support system MESAP

Sound energy and environmental accounting must be the basis of any strategic decision making in order to keep up with the increasing complexity of energy and environmental problems. Therefore, improvements in the data management of existing decision support tools become essential. MESAP, the Modular Energy System Analysis and Planning environment, integrates modern information management with existing operations research methodologies. The design principles are flexibility concerning structure and aggregation of the analysed system, modularity of the involved methodologies and user friendliness of the software. The essential aspect of MESAP is the standardisation of the data interface achieved through the separation of the database design from the mathematical modelling algorithms. The database is designed as a case study information system and can serve any process-engineering oriented energy system model. Today, MESAP is used at the local, regional and national level to perform energy and environmental management, demand side management, integrated resource planning, life cycle and fuel chain analysis.