Spatial Analyses of Electricity Supply and Consumption in Turkey for Effective Energy Management and Policy-making - Implementing Environmental and Resource Management - page 154

ity sector following the economic crisis in 2001, aiming to create a competitive
energy market, (Özkývrak 2005; Altınay and Karagöl 2005).
Therefore, Turkey must have sufficient capacity and secure energy sources to
be able to supply affordable electricity constantly to compete in world markets. To
achieve this, effective and measurable decision-making tools and approaches for
energy management and policymaking must be in place. Thus, this study aims to
investigate the spatial distribution of electricity generation and consumption in
Turkey using Geographical Information System (GIS) and spatial data analysis
methods. This can provide information that will guide decision and policymaking
on energy management in Turkey.
The chapter is organised as follows: section 14.1 starts with a discussion of the
importance of energy management and possible uses of spatial analysis in energy
sector management and policymaking. Section 14.2 describes data collection and
processing. Section 14.3 shows visualisation results of electricity generation ca-
pacity and consumption data, and section 14.4 presents exploration results. This
section also describes the methods employed in the study and the reasoning behind
their usage. The chapter ends with a conclusion and recommendation for further
studies in section 14.5.
14.2 Data Collection and Processing
Spatial analysis of electricity generation capacity and consumption first requires
the collection of relevant data based on certain geographical units. In this study,
the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics level 3 (NUTS level 3), a stan-
dard designed for European countries to aid in the referencing of administrative
divisions for statistical purposes, is adopted as the main geographical representa-
tion of the data. NUTS level 3 divides Turkey into 81 provinces (see Figure 14.1 ).
Fig.14.1. Map of Turkey showing the 81 provinces based on NUTS level 3 (source: digi-
tised from Başarsoft 2010)