Case study:
Modelling site suitability for wind farms
Evaluation/Reflection
Staff Feedback
As a project, which ran within a taught
GIS module, the general feeling of the two staff involved is that the
case study generally worked well. One colleague felt that from an assessment
point of view the students had been given almost too much support, though
the final marks for the module didn't seem to differ greatly from previous
years which had been delivered and assessed in a very different way. One
general concern related to the fact that by giving students a substantial
level of support via the manual, it may not have encouraged them to think
things through for themselves. By simply following the relatively detailed
instructions they were able to produce outcomes without necessarily understanding
fully what they had done. However, it was fairly clear from the final
assessment, especially those sections where students were asked to explain
the process they had carried out, that some students were able to demonstrate
a clear understanding of what they had done. Other students who had adopted
a more mechanistic approach did not show the same level of understanding
and this was relatively easy to assess.
From a timing point of view, one staff
comment would be that the timing of such a case study is quite dependent
on class size and staffing resource. We had a student class size of around
62 with two staff and this meant that the three week introductory session
was a bit rushed. However having said that, the time devoted to the students
to finish out the case study seemed about right. So the case study period
of seven weeks could just as easily work for a period of say 8-10 weeks
which would give a bit more time for explanation and for the students
to have a little more time to produce an adequate set of outcomes.
Student Feedback
Student feedback was not formally assessed
in 2002 as it is a biennial process at the university. However informal
feedback confirmed that the students, although they found the project
a significant amount of work were generally happy with the guidance and
flexibility provided by the case study materials. The creation of the
wind-speed criterion was the most time-consuming and potentially the least
well understood part of the process. Several students commented on the
value to them of understanding and working out for themselves the whole
process of downloading, converting and amalgamating different digital
map layers from DIGIMAP. Up until then they had been given pre-prepared
digital data and forcing them to do it for themselves enabled them to
get a better grip on what they had done, especially from a skills development
point of view.
Overall Comments
In general, the students found the process
of registration and downloading of data From DIGIMAP to be fairly unproblematic.
Because they had also been taught elsewhere in the module how to use Map
Manager, it made its use within the case study a little easier. Some of
the main technical problems related to an understanding of the UK National
Grid when it came to the wind speed modelling programme. It would probable
be useful to use an extra week to go through that process in a little
more detail though again most of the students seemed capable of muddling
through it in the end. Interestingly, the students came up as usual with
a series of interesting variations on the set task and actually found
it easier to do the wind speed modelling after they had modelled the other
criteria rather than at the same time (as was originally intended). This
in fact turned out to be a more efficient way of doing it if a little
less technically correct and a sure sign that students have an innate
ability to identify the optimal labour saving device for carrying out
assessed work. By identifying the sites first this enabled them to model
smaller areas for wind speed which meant less time spent on data entry.
However the disadvantage of this approach was that the wind speed interpolation
carried out through Spatial Analyst was perhaps 'narrower' than it might
have been with a potential impact based on a reduced sample size. However,
one had to admire the fact that some understanding of the process had
produced this short-cut !!
Another technical change came at the stage
5 where the final results were calculated. In the initial draft, a crude
eye measure was taken of minimum, maximum and average wind speed values
for the selected sites. The use of Grid Analyst allowed this information
to be extracted from the raster layer and correctly calculated to provide
the same data in an easier and more statistically sound way from within
the GIS.
Additional Feedback
Although the case study was directed at
identifying optimal sites for wind-farms, the nature of the modelling
involved gave it a generic flavour for site location generally. As a result
there have been ideas based around developing the model to provide future
student groups with additional site-location modelling options using different
settings. A number have been modelled with postgraduate students at the
University which closely follow the structure of the existing case study
but which use different criteria specific to the specific modelling application
involved. These include a draft case study based on Woodland sites for
regular informal recreation (developed by Anna Manoukiants) and another
on the siting of building waste materials in urban areas (developed by
Stefania Rosso). Both of these are in the process of development and may
be incorporated as full optional case studies in future years.
