Further development of Marine Scotland's seabird sensitivity mapping tool, for the Offshore Renewables JIP for Offshore Wind (ORJIP OSW)

Descriptions

Calling for entries from companies and consortia interested to further develop Marine Scotland’s seabird sensitivity mapping tool, created under ORJIP Offshore Wind Stage 1. The existing tool was delivered by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) in June 2019, and is capable of estimating, for the Scottish coastline waters: a) the relative importance of a location for individual seabird species and species groups, b) the likelihood of birds at that location being from a SPA population, and c) their sensitivity to offshore wind farm developments. This report can be made available to potential bidders upon request. This new project looks to further develop the tool, and will require the contractor to: a) Expand the scope of the tool by incorporating additional datasets and improving it’s functionality b) Improve the tool’s flexibility in updating existing, and accepting new, distribution data (e.g. GPS and at-sea surveys) c) Improve the tool’s transparency to make clear what underlying data the outputs are based on d) Address uncertainties and sensitivities in the tool e) Extend the tool’s geographical coverage to beyond Scotland f) Future proof the tool as reasonably as possible g) Make the tool publicly available online h) Provide 3rd party validation of the tool i) Prepare a manuscript for publication in a peer reviewed scientific journal