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Manual 1. Introduction
5. Results and Outcomes You have now worked your way, laboriously or otherwise through the different criteria to come up with an initial set of 4 sites for your wind farm (IC). You have further developed this process through the additional modelling to identify 4 further sites (MC) which fit the environmental, planning and technical concerns of all interested parties. Your final task is to write a Site Suitability report with additional cartographic, statistical and tabular outcomes to present to a fictional planning committee in the local area where you have worked. The written report does not have to be of great length. We recommend a length of around 1,500 -2,000 words. This report will explain the context and location of the work, the criteria chosen initially and where relevant modified. You will then explain the GIS modelling you carried out to show how you identified the final 4 sites for both IC and MC approaches. You may use a flow-chart if you wish as this may summarise the process succinctly for the reviewer. You would also be expected to illustrate the chosen sites in a number of printed maps (following correct cartographic principles) and provide a final table which explains the potential impacts of the chosen sites to assist in further decision-making. For checking purposes you will also be expected to include three key themes on a disk with your submission, viz. IC, MC and the windspeed text file you created. (remember to include all three .shp, .dbf and .shx files) This summary may help you by providing a check-list of final requirements:
Maps should preferably be printed from layouts. Where printing is difficult, you can save them as JPEG files from the layout and incorporate them with the final report. Tabular output is difficult to manage within ArcView and may need to be created within a spreadsheet programme. Alternatively the table options within word processing programmes can also produce good quality outputs. Future development of case study The Case Study is intended to be a sample application using some very simplified criteria. It would not stand up to detailed technical scrutiny in the Wind Energy field however it could be developed in the future to make it a little more robust. This would involve finding out more about the technical specifications of different wind turbine models and looking at their suitability to the identified sites. This might be in relation to the minimum site sized needed, needs for specific minimum and indeed maximum wind speeds (turbines have been known to fall over in very big winds) and power outputs based on the number of turbines which can be fitted in the site. It is also likely that there are a number of important criteria missing such as proximity to ridge-lines (wind speeds become erratic on the 'back' side of a mountain) and closeness to the sea (higher wind speeds and lesser interference). Some of these criteria could be identified from the technical literature and added to develop the model further. Additionally, the demographic side of the model could be developed to look at the number of homes served in the vicinity of each site. In this way the practical local benefits to the power supply chain could be measured. This would involve only adding a small amount of additional data (essentially a column with numbers of households) to the ward map and then running a distance command and subsequent geo-processing intersect for each site to identify how many households fall within a specified distance of each site. This has not been included at this stage as it remains to be seen how the project works out in the classroom environment and whether it will need a greater or lesser input for optimal student educational benefit. |
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