Normandeau Wind-Wildlife Risk Tool

Project Overview

This ArcGIS Viewer for Wind-Wildlife Risk is a user-friendly, web-based interface that allows users to identify the risk of collision with wind turbines for nine species of birds in the mid-western United States. The empirical risk model was created and tested during a two-and-a-half year project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.

The model is based on landscape topography, habitat characteristics, and potentially risky behaviors (e.g., migratory or mating display flights), to create a spatiotemporal prediction of when and where particular species would be most at risk from collision. The Spatial Institute was brought into the project by Dr. Greg Forcey, the model’s developer, after the model had been created.

The task for the Spatial Institute was to create a simple interactive ArcGIS web map viewer to help the wind industry and the public to account for the risk of wind turbine collision as part of the wind turbine siting process.