Multi-disciplinary group developing infrastructure for offshore wind
A team of scientists including Alison Bates, environmental conservation and School of Earth & Sustainability, and Sanjay Arwade, civil and environmental engineering, has been awarded an NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC) Planning Grant to identify with industry partners the key priorities for offshore wind.
The project brings together those with relevant expertise in offshore wind energy from several engineering disciplines, fields of science, the national laboratories, state and federal resource management agencies, industrial stakeholders, and developers; as well as those from affected coastal communities.
UMass has the potential to play a key role in setting national priorities for wind energy based on a data-driven, multi-disciplinary system-level framework to identify where advances are needed in science, engineering, and process in order to create a resilient infrastructure that enables responsible wind energy.
This project will include two workshops at UMass Amherst this spring that will bring global experts to campus to discuss convergent research objectives and approaches. Bates will spearhead a workshop on social acceptance and ecological considerations relative to wind energy.