POSTER: Weighted Environmental Sensitivity Model for Offshore New York
20 Mar 18
5:00 PM
-
6:00 PM
Tracks:
Permitting and Environmental Considerations, Poster Presentation
E & E developed a weighted sensitivity model to compare the potential impacts to selected marine resources from activities that may occur during pre-construction, construction, and post-construction of offshore wind facilities in New York as part of the state’s Offshore Wind Master Plan studies. The overall approach was to first conduct a literature synthesis and risk assessment, which identified risk and potential impacts to each selected marine resource. Based on the risk assessment, regulatory context, permitting requirements, BOEM recommendations, seasonality, and other additional factors, sensitivity weight values were determined for the identified receptor groups for each phase of offshore wind development and applied using a weighted sum geospatial analysis model to produce maps of relative sensitivity throughout the Area of Analysis. The high-level sensitivity mapping analysis identified seasonal shifts in regions of relatively higher or lower sensitivity.