Marine Spatial Planning Using High-Resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar Measurements

In this paper, we highlight the importance of high-resolution wind data on the application of multicriteria evaluation technique to colocate offshore wind farms and open-water mussel cultivations. An index of colocation sustainability (SI), based on an environmental information, is constructed using remote sensing data and taking into account both physical constraints (i.e., water depth and wind speed) and environmental data (i.e., chlorophyll-a, sea surface temperature anomaly, and particulate organic carbon). To verify the proposed methodology, five showcases are presented, where SI is evaluated considering potential installation sites in Kattegat, Denmark, using both low-resolution (LR) wind reanalysis maps related to the Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research and Application data set and fine-resolution wind maps obtained by processing synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data. Experimental results show that the availability of a reliable fine-resolution wind information is of great importance in coastal areas where the presence of the land and the isles limits the use of LR wind data.