Abstract
Despite rapid and vast development of wind turbines across the Canadian province of Ontario, there is no map available indicating the location of each wind turbine. A map of this nature is crucial for health and environmental risk research and has many applications in other fields. Research examining health and wind turbines is limited by the available maps showing the nearest community to a wind farm as opposed to each unique wind turbine. Data from provincial-level organizations, developers, and municipalities were collected using government development approval documents, planning documents, and data given directly from municipalities and developers. Wind turbines were mapped using Google Earth, coordinate lists, shapefiles, and translating data from other maps. In total, 1,420 wind turbines were mapped from 56 wind farms. The limitations of each data source and mapping method are discussed. There are numerous challenges in creating a map of this nature, for example incorrect inclusion of wind farms and inaccuracies in wind turbine locations. The resultant map is the first of its kind to be discussed in the literature, can be used for a variety of health and environmental risk studies to assess dose-response, wind turbine density, visibility, and to create sound and vibration models.
Highlights
As part of a larger epidemiological study examining potential health effects from exposure to wind turbines, the maps of wind farms available to researchers were inadequate for designing a study
Given that risk analyses so far have considered residents exposed when living less than 2 km from wind turbines, maps indicating the nearest community to a wind farm did not offer the precision and detail required for developing a spatial sampling framework [1,2]
A map showing individual wind turbines would be a valuable resource for researchers to examine health effects, as the distance that a resident lives from a wind turbine could act as a proxy indicator of a ―dose‖ and could be used to measure the dose-response relationship between wind turbines and health effects
Summary
As part of a larger epidemiological study examining potential health effects from exposure to wind turbines, the maps of wind farms available to researchers were inadequate for designing a study. Given that risk analyses so far have considered residents exposed when living less than 2 km from wind turbines, maps indicating the nearest community to a wind farm did not offer the precision and detail required for developing a spatial sampling framework [1,2]. The wind turbine map created for the purpose of this epidemiological study, as described in this paper, was used to create a buffer around each wind turbine to determine precisely where the population of interest was living. Using this information, a sampling framework and distribution method was designed and was tailored to the spatial distribution of potential participants. This approval ensures that projects follow standards for setbacks: no construction of wind turbines less than 550 m from homes and wind turbines must be far enough from homes so that transmitted noise is less than 40 db when it reaches nearby homes [10,15]
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