Developing an Indicator System for Measuring the Social Sustainability of Offshore Wind Power Farms

Abstract

Taiwan's government has promoted investment in an offshore wind power farm, and local fishermen have protested. A social impact assessment (SIA) has examined the impact of the proposed offshore wind power farm on all stakeholders. The main objective of the present study was to develop an indicator system for measuring the social sustainability of offshore wind power farms; this study also reports on the particular case of Taiwan's offshore wind power project. This study began by defining 35 social sustainability indicators and selecting 23 representative indicators by using rough set theory. Subsequently, 14 key indicators were constructed using the social construction of technology (SCOT) method. Finally, we developed a social impact index for evaluating the social sustainability of offshore wind power farms by using the analytic network process and Dempster-Shafer theory. Our social impact index yields a total score of 0.149 for Taiwan's pilot offshore wind power project; this result indicates that the pilot project is socially sustainable. A substantial contradiction exists between the fishermen's protest and the results of the social impact assessment. The findings can assist the government in building a coordination platform for the investors and the fishermen. Government regulation is necessary to set boundaries for fishing areas that protect both the fishermen's and investors' rights.

A Multicriteria Model to Evaluate Strategic Plans for the Nautical and Naval Industry in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia

“…It constitutes a problem in a structure or network system composed of different elements (criteria and alternatives), grouped in clusters and connected to each other in any possible way. The network provides a more accurate modeling of complex environments and allows for handling the usual situation of interdependence between elements in sustainable planning scenarios [43][44][45]. In this work, interdependence among the different criteria of the evaluation model has been determined in collaboration with the experts (Table 2).…”

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Distributed Coordinated Control of Offshore Doubly Fed Wind Turbine Groups Based on the Hamiltonian Energy Method

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Distributed Complementary Control Research of Wind Turbines in Two Offshore Wind Farms

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