Abstract
This report presents the recommendations arising from the Offshore Renewables Joint Industry Programme for Offshore Wind (ORJIP) ‘Assessing the extent and significance of uncertainty in offshore wind assessments’ (AssESs) project. The key motivations for the project are an urgent need to quantify current levels of uncertainty across the ornithological assessment process, sensitivities of estimated impacts to different sources of uncertainty, and a need to improve the way in which information on uncertainty is translated into decision-making within the context of a precautionary approach.
This project was delivered through
- a review of approaches to the treatment of uncertainty within assessments and the evidencebase that informs these approaches,
- a quantitative evaluation of how sensitive key impact metrics are to uncertainty in parametervalues and model assumptions, and,
- stakeholder engagement (via workshops and in-depth semi-structured interviews) to understandhow information on uncertainty is used in assessments within the context of the precautionaryprinciple.
This report integrates this evidence into two sets of recommendations:
Recommendations around priority future research needs to reduce uncertainty are derived primarily from the update to the route map for reducing and quantifying uncertainty in assessments (Searle et al., 2021, 2023), which expanded the original set of 16 priorities to include an additional three emerging priorities, evaluated which priorities are most likely to lead to a reduction in uncertainty, and linked recent and current research activities that address these priorities.
Recommendations around improvements to the evaluation of uncertainty in ornithological offshore wind impact assessments, motivated by the extensive stakeholder engagement within the project:
A1: Develop clearer guidance around technical approaches to the use and propagation of uncertainty within assessment tools
A2: Improve the representation of consultants in the process of commissioning, developing and implementing tools
A3: Develop a more strategic approach to development and maintenance of tools used in assessments
A4: Co-develop ways to address situations in which over-precaution is perceived to occur
A5: Implement more systematic and rapid dissemination and evaluation of new evidence around uncertainty
A6: Facilitate more rapid integration of new evidence into Statutory Nature Conservation Body (SNCB) advice
A7: Ensure an appropriate level of cross-border consistency in approaches to uncertainty
A8: Promote a shared understanding and accessible communication of information around uncertainty
Each high-level recommendation contains a set of specific recommendations, for which we describe the motivation, roles, responsibilities, constraints, dependencies and timescales required to implement them.
There is a particular focus on highlighting recommendations that have potential to rapidly (e.g. within the next 12 months) deliver benefit. A Roadmap for the evaluation of uncertainty in assessments provides a summary of these recommendations for changes to assessments and is intended to be used as a visual tool to promote their uptake and dissemination.