RAEL and GSPP PhD stu­dent Kenji Shi­raishi - who was involved in the Fukushima-​​Daiichi cleanup while employed in the Japan­ese Min­istry the Envi­ron­ment — will present his work on a new geospa­tial multi-​​criteria deci­sion analy­sis method with spa­tial regres­sion to iden­tify Japan’s high-​​quality onshore wind energy poten­tial. After iden­ti­fy­ing the eco­nomic poten­tial of grid-​​connected onshore wind with a GIS-​​based mul­ti­cri­te­ria method, logis­tic regres­sion and Bayesian Con­di­tional Autore­gres­sive (CAR) regres­sion was used to cre­ate a pre­dic­tive model of over­all qual­ity of 4,458 project areas. Other than eco­nomic costs, the model showed other phys­i­cal, envi­ron­men­tal, social fac­tors, and spa­tial het­ero­gene­ity are incor­po­rated to rank the over­all qual­ity of poten­tial. The results also showed far more high-​​quality onshore wind poten­tial exists in Japan than the 18 TWh tar­gets in 2030 and nec­es­sary pol­icy mea­sure­ments to uti­lize the vast potential.

This pre­sen­ta­tion is an excel­lent intro­duc­tion to geospa­tial and eco­nomic energy plan­ning and mod­el­ing efforts.  Kenji is also devel­op­ing SWITCH-​​Japan, and may have open­ings in the design team for stu­dents with strong pro­gram­ming and spa­tial skills.  Kenji has also worked on issues of nuclear energy in Japan and Asia, and on energy options for Bangladesh, among other projects.

(Pizza and salad will be provided)