Outline:

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Lecture 19Environmental assessment

• Outline
• Introduction
• Multi-criteria evaluation (MCE)
• Examples

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Introduction

• Principles of environmental protection
• land/air/water as common resource
• limited scale and sustainability
• essential to make best possible use
• identify suitability/appropriateness of use
• prevent overuse and degradation
• protect and survive principle
• requires legislation (e.g. EPA, 1990 TCPA, 1990)

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Tragedy of the commons

• Each man is locked into a system that compels
  him to increase his use of the commons without
  limit - in a world that is limited. Ruin is the
  destination to which all men rush, each pursuing
  his own best interests in a society that believes
  in the freedom of the commons. Freedom of the
  commons brings ruin to all.
• (Hardin, 1972, p.255)

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EPA 1990

• An Act to make provision for the improved control
  of pollution arising from certain industrial and
  other processes to re-enact the provisions of
  the Control of Pollution Act 1974 relating to
  waste on land with modifications as respects the
  functions of the regulatory and other authorities
  concerned in the collection and disposal of waste
  and to make further provision in relation to such
  waste to restate the law defining statutory
  nuisances and improve the summary procedures for
  dealing with them, to provide for the termination
  of the existing controls over offensive trades or
  businesses and to provide for the extension of
  the Clean Air Acts to prescribed gases to amend
  the law relating to litter and make further
  provision imposing or conferring powers to impose
  duties to keep public places clear of litter and
  clean to make provision conferring powers in
  relation to trolleys abandoned on land in the
  open air to amend the Radioactive Substances Act
  1960 to make provision for the control of
  genetically modified organisms to make provision
  for the abolition of the Nature Conservancy
  Council and for the creation of councils to
  replace it and discharge the functions of that
  Council and, as respects Wales, of the
  Countryside Commission to make further provision
  for the control of the importation, exportation,
  use, supply or storage of prescribed substances
  and articles and the importation or exportation
  of prescribed descriptions of waste to confer
  powers to obtain information about potentially
  hazardous substances to amend the law relating
  to the control of hazardous substances on, over
  or under land to amend section 107(6) of the
  Water Act 1989 and sections 31(7)(a),
  31A(2)(c)(i) and 32(7)(a) of the Control of
  Pollution Act 1974 to amend the provisions of
  the Food and Environment Protection Act 1985 as
  regards the dumping of waste at sea to make
  further provision as respects the prevention of
  oil pollution from ships to make provision for
  and in connection with the identification and
  control of dogs to confer powers to control the
  burning of crop residues to make provision in
  relation to financial or other assistance for
  purposes connected with the environment to make
  provision as respects superannuation of employees
  of the Groundwork Foundation and for remunerating
  the chairman of the Inland Waterways Amenity
  Advisory Council and for purposes connected with
  those purposes.

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Town Country Planning Act 1990

• An Act to consolidate certain enactments relating
  to town and country planning (excluding special
  controls in respect of buildings and areas of
  special architectural or historic interest and in
  respect of hazardous substances) with amendments
  to give effect to recommendations of the Law
  Commission.
• The Town and Country Planning Act, 1932, enabled
  local authorities to prepare, planning schemes,
  and the Town and Country Planning (Interim
  Development) Act, 1943, extended interim
  development control throughout the country. Two
  other measures were directed to the problems of
  particular localities the Town and Country
  Planning Act, 1944, which gave positive powers to
  re-plan and rebuild areas of extensive war damage
  or obsolescence and the New Towns Act, 1946.

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Question

• How does one develop an Environmental Assessment
  using GIS?

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GIS-based EA

• Key stages
• problem definition
• method of impact assessment
• data collection and processing
• assessment
• evaluation
• reporting

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Example wind farms
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Example wind farms

• Problem?
• what impacts?
• Method?
• what GIS analysis?
• Data?
• what data and processing required?
• Assessment?
• application of method(s)?
• Evaluation?
• Report?

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Sieve mapping

• Early methods
• Ian McHarg (1969) Design with Nature
• tracing paper overlays
• landscape architecture and facilities location
• Bibby Mackney (1969) Land use capability
  classification
• tracing paper overlays
• optimal agricultural land use mapping

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GIS approaches

• Sieve mapping using
• polygon overlay (Boolean logic)
• cartographic modelling
• Example uses
• nuclear waste disposal site location
• highway routing
• land suitability mapping (e.g. wind farm
  location)
• etc.

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Question

• What problems or limitations are there with the
  sieve mapping approach?

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Multi-criteria evaluation

• Basic MCE theory
• Investigate a number of choice possibilities in
  the light of multiple criteria and conflicting
  objectives (Voogd, 1983)
• generate rankings of choice alternatives
• simple linear programming algorithms
• multi-objective optimisation
• multi-dimensionality of planning problems

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Principles of MCE

• Methodology
• construct evaluation matrix
• standardisation (normalisation) of criterion
  scores
• evaluation of matrix using MCE algorithms

S11..SI1 S . . S1J..SIJ
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MCE techniques

• Many techniques
• most developed for evaluating small matrices
• suitability for large (GIS) matrices?
• layers criterion scores
• cells or polygons choice alternatives
• incorporation of levels of importance (weights)
• Incorporation of constraint maps
• e.g. ideal point analysis, weighted linear
  summation, hierarchical optimisation, etc.

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Example weighted linear summation
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Conclusions

• Few GIS packages provide MCE functionality (e.g.
  Idrisi32)
• Most GIS provide facilities for building MCE
  analyses (e.g. Arc/Info GRID)
• Important method for
• site and route selection
• land suitability modelling

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Practical

• MCE in GRID
• Task Develop simple EA for a wind farm in the
  Yorkshire Wolds using MCE
• Data The following datasets are provided
• Digital elevation model (50m resolution 150,000
  OS Panorama data)
• Contour data (10m interval 150,000 OS Panorama
  data)
• ITE land cover map (25m resolution)
• Population data (200m resolution)
• Roads (1250,000 Meridian2 data)
• Wind farm turbine locations

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The Yorkshire Wolds
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Practical

• Steps
• Decide on impact criterion/factors
• Pre-process criterion/factor maps (including
  standardisation of factor maps)
• Decide on criterion/ factor weights
• Build and run MCE model
• Display results

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Learning outcomes

• Experience with building and running MCE models
  in Arc/Info GRID
• Familiarity with MCE techniques and data
  requirements

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Useful web links

• Impact of wind farms in Scotland
• http//www.viewsofscotland.org/Library/VoS20Sites
  20Map20-20Aug03.pdf
• Winfarm.org information exchange
• http//www.wind-farm.org/
• Offshore wind farms in UK web site
• http//www.offshorewindfarms.co.uk/
• Pro-wind energy site
• http//www.yes2wind.com/index.html
• RSPB policy on wind farms
• http//www.rspb.org.uk/policy/windfarms/index.asp
• British Wind Energy Association
• http//www.bwea.com/index.html
• Example of using GIS to site wind farms in Wales
• http//gis.esri.com/library/userconf/europroc96/PA
  PERS/PN26/PN26F.HTM
• Online tutorial on siting/evaluating wind farm
  locations
• http//edina.ac.uk/projects/mapscholar/casestudies
  /foley/context.html

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Next week

• Spatial Decision Support Systems
• principles and theory
• examples
• online SDSS
• Practical Siting radioactive waste disposal
  facilities using web-based SDSS