Global offshore wind turbine dataset

Scientific Data, vol. 8, pp. 191

Abstract

Offshore wind farms are widely adopted by coastal countries to obtain clean and green energy; their environmental impact has gained an increasing amount of attention. Although offshore wind farm datasets are commercially available via energy industries, records of the exact spatial distribution of individual wind turbines and their construction trajectories are rather incomplete, especially at the global level. Here, we construct a global remote sensing-based offshore wind turbine (OWT) database derived from Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) time-series images from 2015 to 2019. We developed a percentile-based yearly SAR image collection reduction and autoadaptive threshold algorithm in the Google Earth Engine platform to identify the spatiotemporal distribution of global OWTs. By 2019, 6,924 wind turbines were constructed in 14 coastal nations. An algorithm performance analysis and validation were performed, and the extraction accuracies exceeded 99% using an independent validation dataset. This dataset could further our understanding of the environmental impact of OWTs and support effective marine spatial planning for sustainable development.

Authors 5

1. Ting Zhang

   State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research · East China Normal University

   Affiliation as printed

   State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research, East China Normal University, 200062, Shanghai, China

2. Bo Tian corresponding

   State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research · East China Normal University

   Affiliation as printed

   State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research, East China Normal University, 200062, Shanghai, China. btian@sklec.ecnu.edu.cn

   State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research, East China Normal University, 200062, Shanghai, China

3. Dhritiraj Sengupta

   State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research · East China Normal University

   Affiliation as printed

   State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research, East China Normal University, 200062, Shanghai, China

4. Lei Zhang

   Tongji University

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Traffic Information and Control Engineering, Tongji University, 201804, Shanghai, China

5. Yali Si Aachen Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML)

   Leiden University

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Environmental Sciences, Leiden University, 2333 CC, Leiden, Netherlands