Mapping of Offshore Wind Climate and Site Conditions for the Baltic Sea within Latvian Territorial Waters

The paper describes the assessment and mapping of wind climate and environmental conditions of the study region extending from 56.03N 20.2E to 57.22N 21.33E. Maps of wind resources and environmental conditions are the primary method used for presenting the offshore wind resources as well as site conditions data. A GIS database was chosen to house the offshore resources data because the datasets have a significant spatial component. A visualization of the geospatial data is created using the Google Maps platform. The maps datasets consist of gridded 1) climatological information on wind speed and direction, air temperature, air pressure, wind power potential at 10m, 80m, 90m and 100m height; 2) oceanographical information on water temperature, height and direction of sea waves, speed and direction of currents, ice conditions; 3) geological data on bathymetry and sea sediments. The horizontal resolution of the database grid cells is 5 km by 5 km. All the component datasets are spatially referenced to the same spatial base, allowing rapid indexing of the different datasets to each other. A database user may compare information from different datasets in the same geographic location. The GIS database also allows portions of a dataset to be quickly updated as new information becomes available.