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New BioEnergy Atlas gets off to a promising start
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An inception workshop was held in Pretoria to map the way forward for an envisaged new BioEnergy Atlas for South Africa.
The workshop was attended by representatives from the Departments of Science and Technology (DST), Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) and Energy (DoE); the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR); Agricultural Research Council (ARC); University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN); Eskom; South African National Energy Development Institute (SANEDI); the Technology Innovation Agency (TIA) and SAEON.
The BioEnergy Atlas will share SAEON’s data platform with the South African Risk and Vulnerability Atlas (SARVA) and the South African System of Systems (SAEOS), with SAEON as the implementing agency.
Workshop objectives
The objectives of the workshop, which was facilitated by Laurie Barwell of CSIR Natural Resources and the Environment, were to introduce the project and work plan to the stakeholders; gain mutual understanding of the work currently under way or recently completed; get confirmation of a framework for collaboration and resource maximisation; identify teams for collaboration on sub-tasks; and identify role-players for inclusion in a stakeholder workshop.
SAEON’s Chief Data and Information Officer, Wim Hugo, briefly looked at the bio-energy context in which the atlas was expected to play a crucial role. He argued that it was vital not to evaluate bio-energy in isolation, but against the backdrop of traditional (fossil and nuclear) and renewable non-biological sources. The feasibility of the project was intricately dependent on production and delivery costs, the distribution network and time to market. He also pointed out that the energy mix and locality of consumption were strongly dependent on assumptions about future human activity in terms of migration and urbanisation (Figure 3), changes in household income and the nature of economic development.
An important component of the workshop was to identify currently existing data sets of no more than three years old.
International collaboration
Hugo stressed the importance of close international collaboration with organisations such as the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), EnerGeo and BAfA which would include data exchange; joint model development and re-application; and joint contribution of components to and integration with GEO and the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). Other important aspects discussed included the establishment of a collaborative group locally which would be capable of maintaining and extending bio-energy knowledge and resources; the embedment of the data, service, and knowledge resources into SAEOS to ensure that future users are guaranteed access and availability once the project has been completed; as well as a business plan for future sustainability.
Hugo further looked at aspects such as the project framework (Figure 1), possible themes, pathways (Figure 2), quality control and accreditation of data, and project timelines.
Stakeholder input
Each of the stakeholder representatives then gave a short presentation on their specific area of work, how this could slot into the atlas, their expectations of the atlas, and current and potential data sets they would be able to contribute.
Project timelines
September 2012 was agreed as the date on which South Africa would have a fully functioning first release of the BioEnergy Atlas, deployed as a web application with distributed data sets, map composition, analysis and optimisation tools as well as a snapshot of currently available information. It was envisaged that the data sets, yields and potentials based on it, and optimal decisions derived from it, would be completed by September 2013.
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