The main objective for this project was to find areas around the UK continental shelf which could be further explored for their potential as future offshore wind farms. The data used included bathymetric rasters for the waters around the UK, shapefiles of oil and gas fields and wells, a distance to the coast raster, and modelled wind speed values for the UK continental shelf. From these, factor and constraint rasters were created. A Multi-Criteria Evaluation (MCE)\u00a0model was created after the factor rasters were were normalised, weighted according to their relative importance using the Analytical Hierarchy Process method and then overlaid\u00a0 with each other and finally with the constraints. The resulting rasters highlight the suitable areas for future research. Sensitivity analysis was carried out by creating a suitability raster using equal weights for all factors. Both final outputs showed that the most suitable areas are found mainly\u00a0off the\u00a0Western Isles in north-west Scotland, as well as off the north-western, eastern, and south-eastern English coastlines. The rest of the areas differed between the two rasters. These suitable\u00a0cells should be considered for smaller-scale evaluation where more factors and constraints available at such scales could be added in order to make informed decision on where\u00a0potential offshore wind farms could be built.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The main objective for this project was to find areas around the UK continental shelf which could be further explored for their potential as future offshore wind farms. The data used included bathymetric rasters for the waters around the UK, … Continue reading