Mapping Potential Wind Energy Zones in Suez Canal Region, Using Satellite Data and Spatial Multicriteria Decision Models

Abstract

Spatial mapping of potential zones for wind energy is crucial for sustainable regional planning. The Suez Canal Region, Egypt, is currently a focus for national government and international investments for developing the logistic area. The Suez Governorate region is known of its high wind speed along the Gulf of Suez coast. This paper aims at estimating and mapping the potential zones for harnessing wind energy in such region. The method utilizes satellite data and spatial multi-criteria evaluation. Landsat 8 OLI satellite image was used to derive the land-use/land-cover map. Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) digital elevation model (DEM) was used in modeling the wind power density map using the region's annual average wind speed data. Decision criteria including the climatic conditions, topography, infrastructure and land-cover maps were standardized, weighted and aggregated using weighted linear combination to identify the potential wind energy zones. The results reveal that the highest potential zones for wind energy reach a maximum value of 650 Watt/m 2 and a mean of 310 watt/m 2 and are located in the south-eastern part of the Suez Governorate Region along the Gulf of Suez. Findings indicate a high potential for harnessing wind energy in the region. The resultant maps can be used as guidelines for regional planning and zoning of renewable energy resources.

Can MCDA Serve Ex-Post to Indicate ‘Winners and Losers’ in Sustainability Dilemmas? A Case Study of Marine Spatial Planning in Germany

“…The benefit of MCDA is its provision of a transparent and structured consideration of trade-offs in decision-making, among other benefits such as providing a flexible tool for mapping decision problems [17], evaluating the robustness of decisions [18], allowing stakeholder participation, and analyzing planning scenarios as well as their performance in a traceable way [18,19]. The use of MCDA methods in the environmental and energy fields has been growing [17,[20][21][22], while tools for decision support in wind energy site selection have been developed, e.g., [23,24] for OWP [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32].…”

Detection of maritime traffic anomalies using Satellite-AIS and multisensory satellite imageries: Application to the 2021 Suez Canal obstruction

“…On 23 March 2021, a northbound large container ship, Ever Given (IMO 9811000, length 399.94 m and width 59 m) was passing through the southern part of the Suez Canal on its way to Rotterdam (Forti et al, 2021). Notably, this canal is usually windy and its southern part is the windiest (Effat, 2017). At that time, there was a severe sandstorm hindering the visibility accompanied by a strong wind (40 kts) at that southern part of the canal (Forti et al, 2021; Khan and Rahman, 2021).…”