Deliverable D6.5 “Environmental and Social Acceptance Tools – alpha version” of the DTOceanPlus project include the details of the Assessment Design Tools module: “Environmental and Social Acceptance” (ESA), and it represents the result of the work developed during the tasks T6.2 and T6.6 of the project.
This document summarises both the functionalities as well as the more technical aspects of the code implemented for this module. ESA tools will provide the user with four assessments:
- Identification of the potential presence of endangered species in the area (i.e. species included in the IUCN red list);
- Environmental impacts estimated using relevant metrics such as the underwater noise or the collision risk between vessels/devices and the marine wildlife;
- Estimation of the carbon footprint of the project in terms of two mid-point indicators, i.e. Global Warming Potential (GWP) and Cumulative Energy Demand (CED);
- Information to improve the social acceptance of the project considering cost of consenting and jobs creation.
The Business Logic of the code, i.e. the actual functions of the ESA module, has been implemented in Python 3. Moreover, the code is provided with an Application Programming Interface (API), developed in OpenAPI, in order to interact and communicate with the other modules of the DTOceanPlus platform: A Graphical User Interface (GUI) will be developed, consistently with the other modules, in Vue.js, allowing the user to interact easily with the ESA tool, inputting data and visualising results.
The Business Logic of the code has been verified (85%) through the implementation of unit tests, guaranteeing easy maintainability for future developments of the tool. A section of Examples completes the present document, showing the capabilities of the tool.