Qualifier Seminar by Mr Norhakim Yusof

Department of Geo-Information Processing

Developing Geovisual Analytics Approach for Wind Farm Development Decision Making

Abstract

At present, there is significant interest in the use of wind energy as an alternative clean energy source. Wind can be understood as a dynamic and continuous space-time phenomenon, generated by complex mechanisms involving the rotation of the Earth, heating and cooling effects from the Sun on the Earth’s surface, temperature gradients between land and sea, and the physical topographic effects of mountains and other obstacles. The changeability of wind speed over space and time causes problems for determining power production for specific areas. It has been found that wind resources face shifts in location, intensity and duration that in turn create difficulties for selection of wind turbine sites. Besides the geographical distribution of wind speed, other wind parameters such as direction, gustiness, wind profile, wind persistence and topography effects (wind deflection) are essential in wind resource assessment for successful application of wind farm.
 
The main focus of the study is to provide an integrated analytical reasoning approach for the wind farm decision-making by integrating Geovisual Analytics (GVA) functionality with Spatial Multicriteria Decision Analysis (SMCDA). Geovisual Analytics is an emerging multidisciplinary field in the domain of Information Visualization. It has developed from the extension of Visual Analytics approaches to deal with geospatial information in order to derive understanding the complexity of highly-dimensional spatial datasets. Geovisual Analytics (GVA) aim to provide integrated visualization and reasoning solutions to better support users in the decision making process. This offers advantages to the user because it provides visual cues that may facilitate the decision maker to explore and create 'what-if' scenarios for wind farm planning tasks.  It is argued that GVA functionalities can contribute significantly to the design phase of the decision-making process. During the design phase, a decision maker must incorporate multiple criteria and define their interdependencies in generating the set of alternative solutions.

Methods will be proposed to facilitate a range of alternative decision making strategies. It is envisaged that the proposed method(s) may reduce uncertainty and subjectivity on the part of decision-makers, and will generate sufficiently robust derived solutions. These will be developed in the context of specific case studies in the Netherlands and Malaysia respectively. The expected outcomes of the research center on the integration of  Spatial Multicriteria Decision Analysis method with Geovisual Analytics. Specifically, the focus will be on the development of prototype of analytical reasoning tools, to be implemented within the ILWIS GIS.

Keywords: Wind speed, wind farm, Geovisual Analytics (GVA), Spatial Multicriteria Decision Analysis (SMCDA)

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