Towards a more robust Irish Marine Atlas : an analysis of data gaps in relation to a proposed offshore wind farm

Verkefnið er unnið við Háskólasetur VestfjarðaAlthough Ireland is an island nation, marine management has not received as much attention as one would expect in recent years. The advent of climate change and resultant renewable energy targets is slowly beginning to turn attention towards the potential of the marine area. Possessing a large potential for generating renewable energy from various marine renewable energy sources, Ireland stands to gain significantly from its marine resources. Marine management practices in Ireland to date have mainly involved the establishment of marine atlases. The basis of this study was an analysis of the Irish Marine Atlas (IMA) data in relation to an offshore wind farm using the Kish Bank as a case study site. Marine atlases of other countries were assessed for comparative purposes. Previous studies involving data analysis, environmental assessments of offshore wind farms and general offshore wind farm literature were also investigated. IMA data was assessed using a tailored data quality assessment rating system and planning constraints were visualised under separate themes consistent with EU standards for environmental assessments. The results suggest that a comprehensive environmental assessment of an offshore wind farm cannot currently be undertaken using the data available on the IMA. There are a number of reasons for this including non-downloadable datasets, insufficient knowledge of the effects of human activities on the marine environment, a lack of local scale data and the existence of two national marine atlases in Ireland. The data itself displayed deficiencies relating to availability, detail, timeliness, accuracy, completeness, clarification and resolution