Use of Conceptual Mapping in the Offshore Multiuse Setting: implications for complex biosystems development

The offshore Multiuse Setting (MUS) is a concept that seeks to co-locate marine industrial activities including wind farms, aquaculture, and tourism. MUS are thought to be an innovative way to promote efficiency in resource use. Despite this contention, plans for MUS are plagued by an implementation gap whereby innovative ideas do not actualise into commercial operations. A suggested barrier to progression of MUS is the lack of understanding surrounding the consequences to economic, societal and environmental dimensions of the system that result from MUS designs and activities. The implementation of a MUS has the traits of a complex decision problem and thus will benefit from decision analysis to structure the decision-making process. Here we show the consequences resulting from implementation of the Multiuse Setting concept against multiple objectives - environmental, social, and economic – through the application of group-based cognitive mapping. The assessment involved the use of a hypothetical case study to introduce system boundaries and explored predictions about the outcomes of implementation using a modified Delphi method approach. The results demonstrate that there are a network of social-ecological changes with both positive and negative (and potentially costly) implications across and within sustainability dimensions. We illustrate how systemic views contradict existing claims about seaweed aquaculture and co-location with wind farms, such as carbon sequestration potential and spatial resource efficiency, considering the complexity of an MUS project. The methodology provides a route to recognise trade-offs and risks from, and provide alternative strategies for, the MUS and wider seaweed aquaculture within the context of the broader industrial strategy of Sustainable and Circular Bioeconomy transition.