A Planning Tool for the Automated Quantification and Visualization of Blue Space

Abstract

The availability of water surfaces in urban areas (urban blue space) has a positive effect on people’s health and well-being. To take this knowledge into account in planning processes, the urban blue space should be quantified. Urban blue space is defined as all visible and accessible water surfaces, with the intrinsic characteristic of being located in populated areas. To assess the visibility of urban blue spaces, individual buildings as well as parts of one building can be evaluated according to the relative visibility of the waters from these locations and vice versa. This report presents the evolution of a workflow to quantify the urban blue space. First, the workflow generates viewpoints on building surfaces by floor, based on a 3D city model. In the next step, a visibility analysis is performed and, finally, the visible urban blue space is quantified for each viewpoint. The quantification and its visualization are performed for both ends of the line of sight: the measure of visible urban blue spaces for each viewpoint is represented on the building facade and the visibility frequency from all viewpoints is evaluated for each part of urban blue space.