My discourse below is a reflection upon what I learned in the final project of the course, having co-written the report “Assessment of the Potential Geothermal Resource of British Columbia*”:

It is a well known fact that despite the fact that Canada possesses plentiful geothermal resources (see the report “Geothermal Resource Potential of Canada” (2012) for validation of this fact), there currently exist precisely zero sites of geothermal electricity production. With geothermal power being one of the few renewable energy sources capable of providing consistent baseload power, and without occasionally onerous environmental concerns such as apply to hydroelectric power, this present paucity is puzzling. Motivated by this gap, our project initially proposed to map the favourability of exploiting geothermal energy in the province of British Columbia, using a variety of data sources (geophysical, geological, social, economic). Ultimately, our project consisted of a multi-criterion analysis (MCE), in which a weighted overlay was performed in order to integrated data including: bedrock geology, fault density, proximity to hot springs, proximity to transmission lines, and proximity to metropolitan areas.

In terms of project management, I assumed the mantle as leader early on, owing from the fact that the idea of using GIS to map geothermal favourability had been mine, given my environmentally conscious leanings, long-standing interest in the promise of geothermal energy, and the recent rise in criticism (if not blatant ignorance) of the environmental reality that is climate change under the rise to power of President-Elect Donald Trump. This entailed that, in contrast to the majority of projects I have participated in before -in which I was either subordinate to others who assumed leadership roles, or in which there was relative equality amongst all group members- I directed and delegated much of the work. This was largely uncharted ground for me, and I believe that I handled the role decently given my relative leadership inexperience. Specifically, one of our team members was responsible for the majority of the mapping, having acquired the basemap of BC himself, in addition to data such as bedrock geology (a massive database containing information on the distribution of 1000s of rock types around the province), hot spring locations, transmission lines, and the locations of geologic faults (represented as vector lines in ArcMap). This data was found relatively easily. Meanwhile, my other 2 group members ‘hunted’ for other data, some of which was substantially more difficult to acquire: heat flow (from borehole measurements), locations and extents of national/provincial parks and Aboriginal reserves, and population density distributions. My largest contribution was the direction of the mapping, particularly with regards to which data analysis methods to use (for example, how to construct a multi-ringed buffer around hotspots, in which decreasing proximity to hotsprings corresponded to decreasing geothermal favourability), and in the writing of parts of the report, and the organization and editing of it in its entirety.

I learned many things from the project. Foremost amongst them was how powerful GIS can be as an analytical tool for spatial data. It enormously simplifies tasks that would be quite involving otherwise, such as being able to change projections or coordinate systems at will, and create maps. I have now acquired experience in many aspects of data manipulation for a site selection process such as that which our project sought to perform: clipping, merging, buffering, calculating line and point densities, and more. Most interesting was the weighted overlay tool we used, an implementation of a linear summation of multiple layers, that allowed us to weight our factors under consideration, and vary them according to the hypothetical priorities of project stakeholders. I realize that it is in fact an enormously arbitrary process, to assign weights to one consideration over another. Who is to say that economic concerns should supersede social concerns, or vice versa? Is the limiting reagent to getting more geothermal energy projects off the ground their economic (un)feasibility, or the lack of knowledge amongst energy exploration companies of detailed subsurface parameters relevant to energy extraction – or something else entirely? Is the lack of spatially comprehensive heat flow data around the province the main deterrent? Or is such data in existence, but unavailable, for a reason inexplicable?

I remain filled with questions in such matters, but have nonetheless gained an appreciation for the importance of data to spatial questions.

*A Boudreau, A Quainoo, J Nevokshonoff, K Fan. Assessment of the Potential Geothermal Resource of British Columbia. December 5th, 2016. The University of British Columbia.