| Summary: | District heating is a centralized energetic system, capable of providing heat to different structures. This technology helps achieving energetic efficiency with a high fuel flexibility, enabling the use of various renewable sources, which will lead to a lower pollution potential. Beside the environmental perspective, these systems show a great ability concerning the social context. Benefits such as, tackling fuel poverty, increasing employment and population in areas suffering from desertification, along with forest fire prevention, lead to the social perspective as the primary motivation for the implementation of these systems, creating the concept of Social District Heating (SDH). Therefore, this paper developed a decision support tool to prioritize locations in the most need of an SHD, with the necessary features to include this technology in its area. A methodology intended to assess quantitative and qualitative variables is presented, step by step, evaluating each location relatively to community aspects, background context and council power criteria. The results presented enhance more than one location, however one appears as the most appropriate for the SDH implementation.
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