Development of a GIS project for screening of a prospective offshore wind licence area using public domain data sources

The United States Department of the Interior is pursuing an aggressive program for licensing of offshore wind development areas. Currently the last announced area is the area offshore the State of Maine on the extreme northeast seaboard of the United States, for which licensing is scheduled for 2025. This paper studies how far a geographic information system (GIS) project for screening of the waters offshore Maine can be taken using solely readily available digital data sources from the internet to categorise the area in terms of potential turbine types and influencing risks to licensing and layout. GIS is a spatial system that creates a connection between data and maps through management and analysis, displaying geographic relations and patterns. The study area was subjected to glaciation during the Quaternary and was then further affected by the effects of glacial retreat. Today the northern edge of the area bounds to the Bay of Fundy - an area experiencing the highest tidal ranges of anywhere in the world, thus variation of currents across the area and their implication to modern seabed processes is important. The paper will demonstrate the development of the GIS project and the results developed.