Project Page Views: [ 652 ]
| Project Metadata Element | Details |
| Project Title | GIS decision and Plan-Making Support System |
| Research Area | EPA Water Pillar: Emerging and Cross-cutting Issues |
| Project Acronym | |
| Principal Investigator or Lead Irish Partner | Björn Elsäßer |
| Lead Institution or Organisation | Queen's University Belfast |
| Lead Country | Northern Ireland |
| Latitude, Longitude (of Lead Institution) | 54.584313529489705,-5.934033393859863 |
| Lead Funding Entity | Marine Institute |
| Approximate Project Start Date | 31/12/2015 |
| Approximate Project Finishing Date | 01/01/2019 |
| Project Website (if any) | |
| Links to other Web-based resources | |
| Project Keywords | Marine spatial planning, Marine atlas, marine renewable energy, tidal turbines, wave energy |
| Project Abstract | Projections for the development of marine sector indicate that industrialization of the marine environment is likely to accelerate in the coming decades. Making room for new marine uses and safeguarding traditional ones, will require the adoption of new integrated management strategies. The adoption of Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) is advocated as a means of addressing potential conflicts and managing the development pressures on the marine environment & resources particularly in Ireland with its extensive surrounding seas. MSP is promoted as a means of managing human uses of the sea in a sustainable manner and to improve decision making. It is a planning process that enables integrated, forward looking, and consistent decision making on the human uses of the sea. Ireland’s Marine Atlas provides an ideal starting point for the collation of essential MSP data. To test the available data, and to identify gaps, this project will adopt a scenario building approach. It will focus on testing the hypothetical scenarios relating to the planning and development of an array of marine renewable energy installations. Utilising the Marine Atlas as a foundation this project will establish methodologies and protocols for data collection, develop decision support tools and models to examine trade-offs, test their utility and draw conclusions with respect to improving datasets and decision making tools. The adoption of the planning of a marine renewable energy array to test the data sets an decision making tools is appropriate as the planning of an array of tidal turbines or wave energy converters has to take into consideration a large range of factors. The introduction of such an array would have to take into account multiple aspects. Due it the complexity of this type of development, data sets and tools refined through this planning scenario will be transferrable to other areas of marine planning. |