The Global Solar and Wind Atlas: a unique Global Spatial Data Infrastructure for all renewable energy

Abstract : The Global Solar and Wind Atlas (GA) is a unique Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) that aims to connect and bring together in a common platform the major databases and information sources around the world in the field of solar and wind energy. The initiative will be expanded to encompass all renewable energies by 2015, and will be the largest information source on renewable energy potentials ever created. It has been developed under the umbrella of the Global Atlas initiative led by IRENA in partnership with the Clean Energy Ministerial. The GSDI is based on open standards and open source and composed by fundamental datasets, a geospatial catalogue and a Web based GIS Interface. The GIS interface provides a way of interaction between users and the other components, including spatial data and tools. The GIS allows users to identify opportunity areas for renewable energy development by searching and loading data listed by the catalogue, overlaying information, and computing locally the technical potential of renewable energy. In this demonstration we aim to show the GA infrastructure and how users can interact with all the different modules with emphasis on the GIS interface.