Abstract
Although there are clear economic and environmental incentives for producing energy from solar and wind power, there can be local opposition to their installation due to their impact upon the landscape. To date, no international guidelines exist to guide quantitative visual impact assessment of these facilities, making the planning process somewhat subjective. In this paper we demonstrate the development of a method and an Open Source GIS tool to quantitatively assess the visual impact of these facilities using line-of-site techniques. The methods here build upon previous studies by (i) more accurately representing the shape of energy producing facilities, (ii) taking into account the distortion of the perceived shape and size of facilities caused by the location of the observer, (iii) calculating the possible obscuring of facilities caused by terrain morphology and (iv) allowing the combination of various facilities to more accurately represent the landscape. The tool has been applied to real and synthetic case studies and compared to recently published results from other models, and demonstrates an improvement in accuracy of the calculated visual impact of facilities. The tool is named r.wind.sun and is freely available from GRASS GIS AddOns.
Highlights
Over the 21st century, global demand for energy is expected to double, arguably requiring growth in renewable energy production such as solar and wind turbines to reasonably meet demands (Lewis and Nocera, 2006)
Landscape quality evaluations may rely upon local guidelines (Hurtado et al, 2003; Regione Autonoma della Sardegna, 2008), good practice manuals (Landscape Institute, Environmental Management Assessment, 2002; Scottish Natural Heritage et al, 2006; Vissering et al, 2011), survey-based or index methods (Ladenburg, 2009; Tsoutsos et al, 2009), and/or colour and light based methods (Bishop and Miller,2007;Chiabrandoetal.,2011;ShangandBishop,2000)
In Section 2.2.2, we demonstrate that when the perceived size is represented as the proportion of the field of view occupied by an object, this becomes independent of the distance between the observer and the object
Summary
Namesoftheauthors. Eng.AnnalisaMinelliisapost-docresearcherattheInstituteUniversitaire EuropéendelaMer(IUEM),TechnopôleBrest-Iroise,France. HerresearchismainlyfocusedonGIS,geostatisticalandtrendanalyses applications,recentlyappliedtocoastalzonesandinthepastappliedtoriver dynamics.SheisalsoskilledingeographicalmodelingusingavarietyofOpen SourceGISsoftware.OneofhermaininterestsisspreadingthephilosophyofOpen Source. IvanMarchesiniisaresearcherattheResearchInstituteforGeo-Hydrological Protection(IRPI)oftheNationalResearchCouncil(CNR)ofItaly. HeisaGeologistwithaPhDinGeomorphologyandHydrogeology. HealsohasalongbackgroundofgeospatialanalysisthroughOpenSourceGIS whichhehasexploitedindifferentfieldsofappliedresearchsuchasfluvial geomorphology,slopeprocessesandminesreclamation. FaithTaylorisaPhDstudentintheEarthandEnvironmentalDynamicsResearch GroupwithintheDepartmentofGeography,King’sCollegeLondon.Sheisa physicalgeographerbytraining,focusingonmodelling,GIS,remotesensingand statisticaltechniquesappliedtonaturalhazards.Hermostrecentresearchlooksat buildinganOpenSource,lowdatarequirementmodeltoforecasttheimpactof triggeredlandslideeventsonroadnetworks.
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