Visual impact assessment of renewable energy developments with the application of multi-criteria decision-making method

The large scale of wind projects and wind turbines' height result in a high level of visibility in the surrounding environment. Urban environments and tourism landscapes are visually sensitive viewpoints with sensitive receptors that need accurate visual impact assessments for the prediction of new projects' effects on the existing landscape settings. In this study, distance, visibility, receptors sensitivity and view percentage that are four important criteria of visual impact have been used for impact assessment of Manjil wind farm's visual effect in the urban environment and tourist destinations of Manjil City in Gilan Province of Iran. The main asset of this study is applying the multi-criteria decision-making method and also using the receptor sensitivity factor which helps to the detection of the most fragile areas based on the sensitivity of the potential significant observers and prepares the possibility of calculating a more accurate extent of the affected areas according to the impact magnitude. Significant viewpoints were determined based on the land use maps and field study and the calculated visibility and view percentage of the points combined by interpolation methods to prepare criteria layers. Receptor sensitivity map developed with classifying the land use data according to the observers' sensitivity. The multi-criteria decision-making method and determined weights were used to calculate the visual impact magnitude. Significant viewpoints of the tourist destinations and buildings of the study area were affected by the high visual impact. Comparison of the calculated results from utilized techniques shows 84.73% similarity.