GIS-Based Assessment of the Prospective Value of Geothermal Zones in Vojvodina

Abstract

Geothermal energy is a stable, low-emission renewable resource whose exploitation depends on locating boreholes with suitable temperature at accessible depth and on the economic distance over which the resulting heat can be transported. This paper applies a Geographic Information System (GIS) workflow to an existing dataset of geothermal borehole temperatures in Vojvodina, part of the Serbian sector of the Pannonian Basin, in order to assess the province's prospective value for three categories of end use: general heating, agriculture, and industrial application/electricity generation. Boreholes were classified into three temperature–depth groups corresponding to these categories, buffer zones reflecting economically viable heat-transport distances were generated around each group, and Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) interpolation was used to produce continuous temperature surfaces between boreholes. The workflow was automated in ModelBuilder and, for the high-temperature group, overlaid with aggregated industrial-zone polygons. The results show that low- and medium-temperature resources are widely and fairly evenly distributed across Vojvodina, while high-temperature resources are concentrated in central Banat. The analysis identifies several discrete areas that meet temperature and distance criteria but contain no existing borehole, representing candidate sites for future exploration, and shows that a number of existing industrial zones already fall within the economic reach of high-temperature boreholes. GIS is concluded to be an effective, reproducible tool for regional geothermal screening. Future work should incorporate geostatistical methods that quantify prediction uncertainty and locally calibrated transport-cost data.