We performed a structured scan of peer-reviewed literature and project reports on: (i) technical feasibility and symbiotic strategies of co-location, (ii) site-selection frameworks and criteria, and (iii) O&M for multi-use arrays. Searches were conducted in databases including Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar, combining terms for offshore wind, wave energy, aquaculture, co-location, site selection, geographic information systems (GIS), multi-criteria evaluation (MCE), weather windows, reliability, and O&M.

Studies were included if they were explicitly relevant to co-location or described transferable methods with actionable criteria, and provided sufficient methodological detail to inform decision support. Studies were excluded if they were purely conceptual with no defined criteria or metrics, or if they were duplicates. To address the sector’s evolution, we further synthesized findings into four thematic groups: (1) global projects and pilots, (2) site-selection frameworks/tools, (3) design criteria (resource, structural, operational), and (4) O&M synergies. Tables 1, 2 summarize the scope and coverage of the selected literature.

Initial research focused on determining whether offshore energy structures could physically support aquaculture gear without compromising safety. Early theoretical studies and tank tests, such as AquaLast and MERMAID, quantified the hydrodynamic loads and design concepts for integrating cages with wind foundations (Buck et al., 2006; He et al., 2015; Buck et al., 2017). These feasibility studies established that co-location is structurally viable for fixed platforms provided that added drag and mass are accounted for in the design phase (Buck et al., 2004; Goseberg et al., 2012). Complementing these design-oriented studies, a field pilot in China (Chen and Xu, 2025) deployed a submersed metal net cage within the wind farm area of the Pingtan experimental zone (near an operational turbine), providing early in-situ evidence that aquaculture installations can be placed and maintained within offshore wind farm conditions.

Building on theoretical validation, physical pilots have shifted focus to operational viability and biological performance. Projects such as EDULIS and the UNITED pilot in the Belgian North Sea moved beyond structural checks to operational trials, deploying mussel longlines and oyster cages between operational turbines (Pribadi et al., 2019; Drigkopoulou et al., 2020). Beyond Europe, the KOREA Co-Location project has conducted similar trials for integrated multi-trophic aquaculture within offshore wind settings, broadening the evidence base to Asian operational contexts (KEPCO and KIOST, 2016). Related work in China further supports technical feasibility, for example, Yue et al (Yue et al., 2023). assess the co-location of wave energy converters with offshore aquaculture using China’s Penghu platform, reporting coupled power-performance and structural dynamic analyses. However, these trials also highlight fatigue-critical connection details and reinforce a broader lesson from offshore pilots that conventional nearshore aquaculture gear often cannot withstand high-energy wave climates, motivating purpose-designed offshore hardware. Consequently, these pilots demonstrated that standard aquaculture gear requires modification to survive in offshore wind environments, generating critical data on gear survivability, biofouling management, and the logistical challenges of accessing sites within the constraints of wind farm weather windows.

More recent pilots are addressing specific harsh-environment challenges. For instance, ULTFARMS is testing depth-adjustable semi-submersible systems to protect gear from North Sea storms (Kamermans, 2025), while AquaWind is validating fish welfare and cage stability under the dynamic motion of floating wind platforms (Roo Filgueira, 2022). These distinct physical trials provide the empirical evidence needed to refine technical limits regarding wave heights and current speeds for future site selection.

Beyond mere co-existence, recent efforts focus on “symbiotic” strategies where facilities actively support one another. The most established synergy is the use of fixed foundations as artificial reefs; despite localized construction disturbance, operational foundations create refugia that support stock enhancement, a concept validated by the established “Rigs-to-Reefs” practice in the Gulf of Mexico (Reggio, 1987; Kaiser et al., 2011) and observed in European wind farms (Hooper and Austen, 2014; Steins et al., 2021).

Active symbiosis is also being explored through shared energy and protection. Because many aquaculture farms still rely on diesel generation for feeding and monitoring, co-located WECs offer a natural zero-emission power supply (Foteinis and Tsoutsos, 2017; Onyango and Papaioannou, 2017). Furthermore, WEC arrays can provide a “shadowing” effect, reducing lee-side wave heights to create calmer windows for aquaculture operations. Modeling studies in the MARIBE and AquaBreak projects indicate that this attenuation can measurably reduce gear fatigue and expand accessible weather windows (Astariz and Iglesias, 2015; Silva et al., 2018; Dalton et al., 2019; Clemente et al., 2023; Liu et al., 2025).

The transition from pilot to commercial scale is now underway. North Sea Farm 1 represents a milestone as the first commercial-scale seaweed farm launched within an operational wind farm, testing the economic viability of multi-hectare layouts and supply chain integration (Amazon, 2024). This project signals that technical barriers to scaling (e.g., spacing for harvesting vessels) are being overcome.

However, scaling remains constrained by non-technical barriers. Early socio-economic studies such as the “Open Ocean Multi-Use” and MUSES highlighted that while engineering solutions exist, regulatory uncertainty, insurance liability, and stakeholder acceptance (particularly from fisheries) remain primary bottlenecks (Michler and Kodeih, 2007; Vollstedt, 2011; Przedrzymirska et al., 2018). Similarly, surveys by the Research Institute for Ocean Economics (RIOE) in Japan confirmed that fishers often view co-location as a spatial constraint rather than an opportunity (R. R. I. for Ocean Economics—Japan, 2013). Although economic analyses suggest that co-location can be profitable (Buck et al., 2010), fishers often view it as a spatial constraint rather than an opportunity (Michler-Cieluch and Kodeih, 2008). Furthermore, while literature often emphasizes successful theoretical synergies, real-world feasibility is frequently limited by the mismatch between species’ biological tolerances and the aggressive physical environment of offshore wind sites.

In response, recent initiatives like OLAMUR and ULTFARMS have moved from ad hoc negotiations to developing repeatable governance frameworks. These projects are establishing protocols for insurance liability, conflict mitigation, and compensation, aiming to convert social license from a project-specific hurdle into a standardized permitting process (Drigkopoulou et al., 2020; Buck et al., 2025; Kamermans, 2025). Looking ahead, China’s national ‘Blue Granary’ program (Dong et al., 2024) highlights that scaling deeper-offshore aquaculture will require coordinated development of large-scale, anti-typhoon offshore enclosures and stronger cross-sector integration, alongside enabling governance and technology pathways to support commercialization.

In the German Offshore Site-Selection project, Gimpel et al (Gimpel et al., 2015). proposed a GIS-based multi-criteria workflow for wind–aquaculture co-location. The approach defines species-specific environmental criteria, standardizes them (e.g., via fuzzy membership), assigns weights, aggregates the results in GIS to produce suitability maps. These maps are finally refined with a risk layer incorporating hazards, conflicts, and profitability. Similar GIS–MCE approaches screen hybrid wind–wave sites with economic, technical, and socio-political criteria (Vasileiou et al., 2017). AquaSpace (Gimpel et al., 2018) operationalizes this logic for aquaculture by flagging feasibility, profit, conflicts, and socio-environmental effects. A practical limitation is the resolution and quality of spatial layers, which motivates the need for higher-resolution datasets and targeted validation. Complementing GIS–MCE, Weiss et al (Weiss et al., 2018c). (see Figure 2) offer a transparent modular screen across three lenses (resource/production, structural, and operational suitability). This framework is useful for early mapping and technology comparison, though the authors note that high per-lens scores are only a baseline and do not capture cross-effects.

More recent efforts focus on interaction-aware and deployment-near models. Villalba et al (Villalba et al., 2022). couple GIS with a Bayesian network influence diagram to jointly evaluate site options, platform types, species, and objectives (e.g., levelized cost of energy, environmental impact) under local depth and metocean conditions (see Figure 3). The Bayesian network influence diagram supports sensitivity analysis and iterative updates as new data or expert knowledge emerge. Pushing toward implementation, Stockbridge et al (Stockbridge et al., 2025). apply fine-grid (≈1 km) mapping in Bass Strait to pinpoint high-potential wind–aquaculture areas while excluding incompatible uses (e.g., oil and gas, shipping), translating criteria into conflict-aware opportunity zones. In summary, these studies represent a progression from coarse suitability to interaction-aware planning. GIS–MCE (Gimpel, AquaSpace) enables transparent screening, while the Weiss framework adds a clear tri-partite structure. Bayesian network influence diagram brings probabilistic coupling and sensitivity insights, and fine-grid mapping operationalizes results at siting resolution.

Co-location interventions such as aquaculture can fail when site physical conditions and species tolerances are mismatched or not rigorously feasibility-tested. Therefore, Rendle et al. (Rendle et al., 2023) proposed a three-step, evidence-based approach for co-locating aquaculture within offshore wind farms: (1) information collection and data synthesis, (2) site suitability and species compatibility assessment, and (3) numerical modeling to test feasibility and scale-uThe wider conservation literature also notes that project failure reports are rare, creating a success-biased evidence base that can encourage repeating unsuitable trials (Catalano et al., 2019). By enforcing data-driven screening plus modeling-based feasibility checks before pilots, the three-step approach helps identify incompatibilities and high-risk contexts early, reducing wasted investment and lowering the chance of proceeding with aquaculture projects that are unlikely to succeed.

Sufficient wind and wave resources are a prerequisite for ocean energy harvesting, yet their joint exploitation depends not only on the abundance of each resource, in terms of power generation potential, but also on their temporal complementarity. Lower wind–wave correlation yields smoother combined power and a more stable electricity supply. Using hindcast products together with constraints such as bathymetry and distance to shore, candidate zones for wind–wave arrays can be identified (Veigas and Iglesias, 2013; Veigas et al., 2014). To quantify complementarity explicitly, several studies compute correlation and variability metrics and then fold them into siting indices. Astariz et al. proposed a co-location feasibility index that integrates resource levels and correlation to select wind–wave sites with improved supply quality (Astariz and Iglesias, 2016a); Rasool et al. later introduced a power fluctuation factor to measure the reduction in output variability achievable by co-location design (Rasool et al., 2021). Using finer-resolution ERA5 data, Kardakaris et al. evaluated complementarity and a synergy index [following analogous wind–solar approaches (Soukissian et al., 2021)], noting that while absolute values may be conservative, the ≈30km grid is important for capturing regional structure (Kardakaris et al., 2021). Multiple European and U.S. case studies report gains in both magnitude and continuity of generation for co-located wind–wave systems (Babarit et al., 2006; Fusco et al., 2010; Stoutenburg et al., 2010; Veigas and Iglesias, 2015). Regional analyses underscore that complementarity is site-specific. In the Caribbean, high wind–wave correlation suggests that solar and storage are needed to mitigate variability (Babarit et al., 2006). Along the California coast, co-location reduced annual zero-generation hours to fewer than 100 (versus ≈200 for wind-only and ≈1000 for wave-only), reflecting landscape and weather-regime effects (Stoutenburg et al., 2010). In Ireland, a 10-year assessment based on irregular-wave.

For seafood production within wind or wave farms, feasibility hinges on water quality and species requirements in addition to structural and O&M constraints (Weiss et al., 2018b). MCE frameworks have been used to screen candidate aquaculture sites via a suitability/sustainability Index derived from physical– chemical parameters (sea surface temperature and surface temperature anomaly, dissolved oxygen, and chlorophyll-a) as demonstrated by studies in Denmark (Benassai et al., 2011; Benassai et al., 2014). Subsequent extensions incorporate additional biological variables such as particulate organic carbon to sharpen discrimination among sites (Di Tullio et al., 2018). Because tolerance windows differ by species, criteria should be adapted during planning to reflect target taxa and production modes (Christie et al., 2014). Some locations may support finfish cages, while others are better suited to shellfish, stock enhancement (e.g., lobsters/crabs), or eco-tourism. Site-specific risk screening should also consider potential contaminants introduced by energy infrastructure; for example, trace elements from corrosion-protection systems may pose ecosystem and human-health risks and thus warrant targeted monitoring during operation (Watson et al., 2025).

Structural requirements are core site-selection filters, grounded in technical standards and tech specs (Jonkman et al., 2009; Norge, 2009; De Andrés et al., 2015; De Andres et al., 2015), and complemented by industry practice [e.g., floating-cage considerations (Cardia and Lovatelli, 2015)]. Typical screening criteria cover water depth, seabed/soil properties, and local wind–wave–current climates. After areas pass these filters, a co-location specific check should surface safety issues and structural risks. In some regions, special hazards dominate (e.g., ice accretion in the Gulf of Bothnia) and warrant explicit siting rules (Mikkola et al., 2018).

Reliability research has focused on integrated MOPs, where coupled failure modes can arise (e.g., aquaculture faults prompting turbine shutdowns and higher fatigue in parked states) (Aryai et al., 2021). For attached aquaculture on fixed platforms, added hydrodynamic loads and altered load paths are primary concerns (Buck et al., 2006; Goseberg et al., 2012). By contrast, co-located (non-attached) layouts largely preserve single-use mechanics, though they can still modify load environments. Wave sheltering by WEC arrays can improve workability at aquaculture sites (Silva et al., 2018) and reduce OWT fatigue demand (Clark et al., 2018). Recent analyses project service-life extensions where attenuation is effective (Liu et al., 2025). These gains, however, are conditional because many WECs enter survival modes during severe storms, which limits attenuation (Zanuttigh et al., 2021). Extreme-load combinations (e.g., storm waves, currents, icing where relevant) therefore remain explicit siting constraints for both OWTs and aquaculture units.

Cross-asset hazards must also be managed for structural safety. Lost or drifting longlines can snag jackets or obstruct access. Failed anchors or small-vessel anchoring can threaten export/inter-array cables. Recent field work details cable-damage risk factors directly relevant to aquaculture service fleets and local fisheries (Lee and Jung, 2025). Practical mitigations common in pilots include cable safety/keep-out corridors and no-anchor zones, and mooring layouts that keep culture gear clear of in-field cables. Regionally, Belgian guidance compiles technical do’s/don’ts for aquaculture in wind farms (moorings, access, corrosion, monitoring interfaces) that feed into siting and engineering choices (Nevejan et al., 2024). Finally, corrosion/biofouling risks should be considered alongside water-quality effects of aquaculture. Localized oxygen dynamics and metal accumulation can affect steel longevity and should be reflected in materials and inspection intervals (Lagerveld et al., 2014).

A large share of offshore wind O&M labor is lost to waiting for suitable weather windows, transport, certified staff, spare parts. Aligning wind–aquaculture tasks can cut this non-productive time and reduce O&M costs (Thomsen, 2014). Asset-management models formalize such synergies via a “synergy factor”, and even conservative values (≈10%) improve return on investment relative to stand-alone operation (Lagerveld et al., 2014; Röckmann et al., 2017). At system scale, co-deploying wind and wave can lower the total installed capacity in a zero-emissions grid (≈17% in a western interconnection case), implying fewer assets to maintain and leaner logistics where resource complementarity is high (Gonzalez et al., 2024).

Weather-window analysis quantifies the fraction of time conditions meet operational limits (O’Connor et al., 2013). In co-located layouts, WEC “shadowing/sheltering” reduces lee-side significant wave height, expanding access windows (Astariz and Iglesias, 2015). Optimized device layouts (covering dominant and secondary wave directions) have shown 18% higher accessibility (≈25% O&M cost reduction), with wave height reduction based designs yielding up to ≈40% wave-height reduction and verified downtime cuts in follow-on studies (Astariz et al., 2015a; Astariz et al., 2015b; Astariz and Iglesias, 2016b). For aquaculture, sheltered pockets around multi-use platforms improve gear handling and harvest operations (Zanuttigh et al., 2015; Silva et al., 2018). Because attenuation diminishes when WECs enter survival mode during severe storms, site selection and layout should be coupled with weather-robust O&M scheduling (e.g., pre-positioned spares/crews and opportunistic task bundling).

Site selection should integrate ecological and socio-economic objectives via MCE so that co-location options are judged not only on profitability but also on environmental performance and local acceptance (Vanegas-Cantarero et al., 2022). Co-location can create habitat complexity and refuge effects, yet construction and operations introduce pressures (e.g., underwater noise, vessel traffic, lighting) that require explicit screening (Lagerveld et al., 2014). Evidence from cumulative-effects research shows population-level sensitivities. For example, a German North Sea analysis found measurable cumulative impacts of offshore wind farms on common guillemots, underscoring the need for seasonal timing, buffer distances, and corridor planning (Peschko et al., 2024). Programs such as SOMOS translate these risks into long-term assessment and monitoring questions (e.g., ecosystem shifts from turbine operations or seaweed shading) that can be embedded in environmental impact assessment to prefer alternatives with lower, shorter, more reversible impacts (Loukogeorgaki et al., 2018; Van den Burg et al., 2020).

Socio-political layers, such as shipping density, port proximity, visual and recreational sensitivities, and benefit sharing, should be combined with technical filters, as in Greek GIS–MCE studies that yield conflict-aware zones (Vasileiou et al., 2017). Co-location also adds cross-asset operational risks that affect siting, including anchor and gear interactions with subsea cables and foundations, as well as access constraints for mixed fleets. Mechanics-based work on ship-anchor impacts provides concrete mitigation levers, such as keep-out corridors, burial/protection depths, and no-anchor zones, that can be encoded as exclusion buffers and layout rules in screening tools (Zhang et al., 2022). Together, these considerations move site selection from single-metric optimization toward a balanced, implementation-ready plan that internalizes ecological safeguards, cable integrity, and workable O&M logistics.

Marine aquaculture will operate under evolving climatic and biogeochemical regimes, requiring more adaptive forms of MSGiven the analytical tools and empirical data already available (for example, GIS models, monitoring programs, and recent case studies), multiple parties are now able to participate in an iterative, multi-perspective process to support MSP decisions (Craig, 2019). For co-location, site selection must account for a broad set of interdependent criteria spanning environmental, technical, economic, and social dimensions. This review organized them into three core considerations (resource exploitation, structural requirements, and operational suitability) together with ecological and socio-political factors. A notable gap in current frameworks is the lack of explicit feedback from wave-attenuation (“shadowing”) to local metocean conditions, despite its recognized importance.

To address this gap, we propose an iterative site-selection framework that explicitly accounts for shadowing. The analysis applies five aforementioned consideration categories across three facility types (OWT, WEC, aquaculture). Once stakeholder and regulatory priorities are set, only the most relevant criteria are evaluated initially, rather than scoring all factors at once. After identifying candidate WEC locations, the shadowing effect is quantified to update local metocean fields; subsequent screening then proceeds on these updated conditions. As one practical option for quantifying shadowing, SWAN (Simulating WAves Nearshore) is a third-generation spectral wave model that estimates spatial changes in wave conditions under modified propagation and is computationally efficient for iterative layout screening and sensitivity studies; it has been widely used in wind–wave co-location research to quantify wave-field modification and lee-side wave-height reduction under candidate WEC layouts (Clark and Paredes, 2018; Silva et al., 2018).

Figure 4 illustrates one pass through the looIn iteration 1, developers prioritize resource exploitation, structural requirements for all facilities, and WEC operational suitability; MCE yields candidate sites, SWAN models with proposed WEC layouts compute wave-height reduction, and metocean inputs are refreshed. In iteration 2, the operational suitability of OWTs and aquaculture is re-assessed under the attenuated wave climate, with socio-economic considerations, environmental impacts, cumulative risks, and structural-fatigue checks revisited if exposure or access changes. Practically, most criteria can be screened in iteration 1, while OWT/aquaculture operational suitability is intentionally deferred to capture shadowing-driven O&M benefits. By closing the loop between layout decisions and environment-conditioned feasibility, the framework can reveal additional opportunities for aquaculture and OWT relative to one-shot screening and naturally extends to future-climate scenarios (Weiss et al., 2020). Adaptive, climate-smart MSP provides governance support for iterative planning, but existing tools are largely sector-general rather than co-location-specific (Reimer et al., 2023). Recent GIS/MCE studies linked with wave-powered aquaculture demonstrate the required data–model coupling, yet they do not implement a formal loop that updates metocean conditions and then re-scores co-uses (Ewig et al., 2025). Overall, the components are available, but an integrated, climate-aware, shadowing-in-the-loop framework for co-location remains an open research need.

Beyond site screening, layout optimization is needed to maximize resource exploitation and operational performance. For co-located wind–wave farms, exploitability (defined by energy yield and inter-resource correlation) can be optimized by selecting WEC/OWT types and sizes and by tuning spatial layouts under constraints (Ferrari et al., 2020; Saenz-Aguirre et al., 2022). Although several works propose co-use layouts for renewables with aquaculture (Zanuttigh et al., 2015; Wang et al., 2021), explicit layout optimization remains scarce. Embedding an economic model (CAPEX/OPEX, logistics) across the wind–wave–aquaculture triad would enable profit-maximizing designs and robust trade-offs (Jia et al., 2022). Critically, shadowing can be included in layout objectives.

By optimizing WEC spacing and placement relative to dominant and secondary wave directions, designers can increase wave-height reduction inside the array to enlarge weather windows and reduce O&M cost (Astariz et al., 2015b), as shown in Figure 5. Tank-scale interaction data for fixed-foundation turbines with heaving WECs provide validation targets for the shadowing and load models used in such optimization (Gubesch et al., 2023). While these modeling and experimental efforts establish a credible mechanism for shadowing-driven wave attenuation, the next step is to quantify uncertainty in the resulting weather-window gains. Because workability is threshold-based, small errors in predicted wave-height reduction can lead to large swings in estimated workable hours. Future work should therefore propagate uncertainty from metocean directionality/extremes (Gilbert et al., 2021) and SWAN/interaction model error (Majidi et al., 2023) into probabilistic weather-window metrics (e.g., confidence intervals for annual workable hours), and incorporate these metrics into layout optimization and reliability targets.

Shadowing-induced climate changes also influence structural loading and fatigue. Model- and pilot-scale studies indicate that wave attenuation in the WEC lee can reduce fatigue damage for both fixed and floating wind substructures, with reported effects on the order of 8–10% under representative conditions (Clark and Paredes, 2018; Clark et al., 2018). To move from promising point estimates to deployable guidance, future optimization should couple multi-directional wind–wave–current climates with reliability targets (e.g., fatigue reliability indices), ensuring that wave-height reduction gains translate to quantifiable life extension for monopiles, towers, and floating offshore wind turbine moorings (Leimeister and Kolios, 2021; Liu et al., 2025). The same machinery can extend to aquaculture arrays. By optimizing stand-off distances and mooring patterns within the sheltered zone, designers may improve gear survivability and harvest accessibility while respecting cable corridors and exclusion buffers. The result is a unified layout problem that jointly maximizes yield, accessibility (weather windows), and reliability by explicitly leveraging shadowing as a controllable design variable.

Socioeconomic evidence indicates that co-location can lower O&M costs through shared crews, vessels, and logistics, most clearly by reducing transit and mobilization when multiple activities can be bundled into a single offshore triHowever, experience also suggests that ‘shared O&M’ does not automatically translate into shared labor: the main hurdle is skills and compliance. Aquaculture operators and fishers may lack the training, certifications, and safety procedures required for turbine access and high-voltage or rope-access work, and cross-training can be time-consuming and liability-sensitive. This challenge has been noted in recent coexistence assessments, which emphasize that standardized safety protocols and targeted cross-sector training are prerequisites for any meaningful sharing of personnel between fisheries/aquaculture operations and offshore wind O&M (Neitzel and Deetman, 2025). Simplifying wind O&M via low-intrusion approaches may narrow this gap; for example, infrared thermography has been proposed as an alternative to sensor-based structural health monitoring (He et al., 2020), and UAV-based inspections provide a practical pathway to reduce rope-access requirements for routine visual assessments (Poleo et al., 2021).

While routine wind inspections are often annual, aquaculture operations require weekly site visits; co-location could leverage this higher visit frequency to embed opportunistic inspections, provided marine-environment feasibility is validated through targeted trials. Interdependencies also introduce scheduling risk (e.g., when energy systems power aquaculture infrastructure, a turbine outage can affect stock welfare). Consequently, co-located O&M becomes a coupled, multi-frequency planning problem. Decision frameworks that optimize task timing under weather uncertainty and resource constraints, such as Markov decision processes and forecast-aware schedulers, are well suited here (Heo et al., 2020; Heo et al., 2023). Recent offshore-wind advances are directly transferable to multi-use arrays. Examples include forecast- and wake-aware O&M scheduling to reduce downtime and improve resource use (de Matos Sá et al., 2024), and data-driven vessel-routing tools to coordinate mixed fleets across variable metocean conditions (Hadjoudj and Pandit, 2023). Future work should: (i) codify role-sharing and cross-training protocols; (ii) integrate aquaculture task calendars with wind/wave workability windows; (iii) couple reliability targets for all assets with weather-window statistics; and (iv) validate low-intrusion inspection modalities (e.g., thermography, unmanned aerial vehicle, unmanned surface vehicle) within routine aquaculture trips.

Early projects have demonstrated technical feasibility and credible business cases, increasing interest among developers, authorities, fishers, and local communities. Trial evidence and lessons learned now enable more confident planning of commercial co-location. What remains is to integrate dispersed insights from engineering, ecology, logistics, and governance into unified site-selection workflows that foster consensus and attract financing.

Multi-criteria evaluation (MCE), implemented in GIS, remains the workhorse for screening multi-use sites, while Bayesian network influence diagram adds interdependency and risk structure. To expand viable areas and reflect interactions, we propose an iterative framework that (i) screens candidate sites, (ii) places preliminary WEC layouts, (iii) updates local metocean via shadowing, and (iv) re-scores operational suitability for wind and aquaculture. This “update-and-rescore” loop aligns with the principles of adaptive MSP and can readily incorporate future climate scenarios.

Resource layers should combine wind/wave potential with complementarity and variability metrics to reflect power quality, while aquaculture layers must capture species-specific water-quality envelopes. Structural and operational criteria should be grounded in standards and local weather windows to ensure safety and access. Ecological safeguards, such as cumulative impact assessment and protection of sensitive receptors, and socio-political factors, including navigation routes, port proximity, coexistence mechanisms, and benefit-sharing frameworks, introduce essential constraints and add value beyond economic return.

Shared services, power supply synergies, and coordinated logistics can reduce O&M costs, provided cross-training and clear role allocation address skills gaps. Wave-induced shadowing has emerged as a controllable design variable that can enlarge weather windows and potentially reduce structural fatigue for wind and aquaculture infrastructure. While studies quantify accessibility gains, fatigue benefits require fuller verification under multidirectional wind-wave-current climates. Looking ahead, co-location layout optimization should jointly maximize yield, accessibility, and reliability, explicitly encoding shadowing, cable/keep-out constraints, and aquaculture moorings to balance total profit against O&M cost and risk.

Actionable recommendations. (1) Publish screening thresholds and spatial buffers (cables, routes, stand-offs) alongside maps. (2) Run wave height reduction updates before final site ranking; re-score operational suitability for wind and aquaculture on the updated metocean. (3) Declare cable corridors and no-anchor zones early; design aquaculture moorings to avoid in-field cables by construction. (4) Specify an O&M calendar with rolling-horizon re-optimization and opportunistic “piggyback” rules. (5) Report uncertainty bands (e.g., device transmission ranges, climate scenarios) with every suitability score.