ReTour: Landscape Laboratories for Collaborative Planning

Abstract

Research on the transition towards a higher share of renewable energy
technologies (RETs) has put a strong emphasis on technological and
economic aspects of generation facilities, often ignoring an equally
important facet of successful transformation: social acceptance. The
prospect of many more siting and decision-making processes entering
previously untouched landscapes and regions in Austria, clearly underlines
how future studies on social acceptance and the conflicts arising from a lack
thereof will be of crucial importance, representing a highly attractive scope
for scholarly investigation and debate. The project presented here aims to
exploit this opportunity by using a case study approach in selected tourism
regions, which we argue represent an ideal and highly relevant scholarly
learning environment.
Mirroring the multifaceted nature of social acceptance research, ReTour is
set up as an inter- and transdisciplinary research project. In collaboration
with an advisory stakeholder group the project uses a mix of methods,
including spatially explicit modelling of potentials, focus groups, conjoint
analysis, visualization studies and virtual reality assessments. Findings and
methodology will contribute to more efficient planning processes, foster
social acceptance and ultimately help maximize the share of renewable
energy. Currently a literature review is underway, a first stakeholder
meeting has been held and spatially explicit modelling as part of the
necessary preparations for the first empirical phase, the laboratories, is
being carried out.
This contribution is focusing on the different aspects of the development of
the laboratories framework, that will be tested and evaluated during the case
study workshops.

Full text

ReTour
Mirroring the multifaceted nature of social acceptance research, ReTour is
set up as an inter- and transdisciplinary research project. In collaboration
with an advisory stakeholder group the project uses a mix of methods,
including spatially explicit modelling of potentials, focus groups, conjoint
analysis, visualization studies and virtual reality assessments. Findings and
methodology will contribute to more efficient planning processes, foster
social acceptance and ultimately help maximize the share of renewable
energy. Currently a literature review is underway, a first stakeholder
meeting has been held and spatially explicit modelling as part of the
necessary preparations for the first empirical phase, the laboratories, is
being carried out.
This contribution is focusing on the different aspects of the development of
the laboratories framework, that will be tested and evaluated during the case
study workshops.
Research on the transition towards a higher share of renewable energy
technologies (RETs) has put a strong emphasis on technological and
economic aspects of generation facilities, often ignoring an equally
important facet of successful transformation: social acceptance. The
prospect of many more siting and decision-making processes entering
previously untouched landscapes and regions in Austria, clearly underlines
how future studies on social acceptance and the conflicts arising from a lack
thereof will be of crucial importance, representing a highly attractive scope
for scholarly investigation and debate. The project presented here aims to
exploit this opportunity by using a case study approach in selected tourism
regions, which we argue represent an ideal and highly relevant scholarly
learning environment.
Renewable Energy in Tourism regions
Core aspects of the landscape laboratories are 3D environments to
support the evaluation of visual landscape impacts, Virtual reality
approaches to enhance immersive effects and new ways of human-
computer interaction to minimise entry barriers and to support
collaborative processes.
The landscape laboratory is a playing and planning tool, developed
and evaluated within the ReTour project. The goal is to provide a set
of methods, tools, and hardware for collaborative planning
processes of renewable energy scenarios in tourism regions.
Large scale impacts on a landscapes scenery can be difficult to
evaluate on standard media such as computer screens, as size
proportions are strongly scaled. Virtual reality (VR) glasses can
contribute to a better perception of realistic scales and perspectives.
Therefore, the resulting renewable energy scenario is transferred to
VR glasses for an individual estimation of the landscape impact.
Qualitative and quantitative analyses will deliver concise results regarding
various sensitive parameters that determine social acceptance, with
particular attention to visual impacts generated by wind turbines and
photovoltaic panels. In addition, the results from ReTour will contribute to
our understanding of multi-level governing the energy transition in Europe
as it brings together national targets with local needs and vice versa.
Secondly, the interlinked and highly interdisciplinary nature of the
methodology that aims to reconcile one of the central divides in research
on energy transitions by merging a social science approach, with techno-
economic modelling procedures, innovative 3D visualizations and virtual
reality applications will be of central interest to scholars from a wide array of
disciplines. More generally the interactive character of the procedures (e.g.
virtual reality application) used, through quasi first hand experiences with
renewable energy scenarios, can serve as a gateway to creating highly
engaging communication platforms.
Firstly, the procedure proposed here, in itself, will represent an interesting
prototype of a participatory decision-making application and can serve as a
template for concrete RET-planning processes in the future. In fact, the
documentation of its operationalization, aimed at increasing social
acceptance and efficiency of the associated decision processes will be of
immediate benefit to any institution involved in building RET structures, an
audience that has already been involved through the accompanying
stakeholder workshops.
We are convinced that the applicability of this project does not only lie in
the findings it will produce but equally the methodology to produce these.
The methodology itself will be interesting for two types of audience.
The 3D environment is driven by the open source game-engine
Godot (godotengine.org) to provide a realistic and interactive 3D
environment for communication and evaluation of different planning
scenarios. The landscape will be generated automatically based on
high-resolution GIS data (Schauppenlehner et. al, 2019). This includes
a digital elevation model, land use data, forest species distribution and
tree heights, building footprints and heights as well as different
infrastructure objects (e.g. wind turbines, power poles, etc.)
Participants from the case study regions can contribute to different renewable
energy scenarios during workshops. To avoid entry barriers, common buildings
blocks (Lego®) will be used for the siting process. The buildings blocks are set on a
map and block size, colour and position will be recorded by an overhead camera.
The video signal will be analysed and the representing items of renewable energy
infrastructure will be placed as 3D objects (e.g. wind turbines or photovoltaic
panels) in the 3D environment. Response from the computer provides an overview
of the site conditions (e.g. average wind speed, slope aspect, land use, etc.),
expectable energy output, as well as potential limitations (e.g. fall shorts of
distances to settlements, etc.).
retour.aau.at
4 Universität für Bodenkultur, Wien; Institut für nachhaltige Wirtschaftsentwicklung
3 Universität für Bodenkultur, Wien; Institut für Wald-, Umwelt- und Ressourcenpolitik
2 Universität Klagenfurt; Institut für Produktions-, Energie- und Umweltmanagement
1 Universität für Bodenkultur, Wien; Institut für Landschaftsentwicklung, Erholungs- und Naturschutzplanung
1 2 3 2 4
Thomas Schauppenlehner , Robert Sposato , Patrick Scherhaufer , Nina Hampl , Christian Mikovits
LANDSCAPE LABORATORIES FOR COLLABORATIVE PLANNING
The project ReTour is funded by the Austrian Climate and
Energy Fund as part of the Austrian Climate Research
Program (project number KR17AC0K13808).
Landscape: Thomas Schauppenlehner
Illustations
Round table: Freepik from - modifiedwww.flaticon.com
Person with VR Glasses: (Freepik from - modifiedwww.flaticon.com
Schauppenlehner, T. et al. (2019 - in Print): Effiziente großflächige interaktive Landschaftsvisualisierungen im Kontext des Ausbaus erneuerbarer
Energie: Das Potenzial freier Geodaten für die Entwicklung interaktiver 3D Visualisierungen. Journal für angewandte Geoinformatik
References
Conclusions and Outlook
3D Environment
The Landscape Laboratory
Introduction
Virtual Reality Assessment
Collaborative Planning Process