Incorporating Bio-Physical Sciences into a Decision Support Tool for Sustainable Urban Planning

Zina Mitraka,Ivan Blecic,Roberto Jose,Nektarios Chrysoulakis,Emmanouil Diamantakis,Eduardo Castro,Ainhoa Gonzalez

doi:10.3390/su6117982

Abstract

Deciding upon optimum planning actions in terms of sustainable urban planning involves the consideration of multiple environmental and socio-economic criteria. The transformation of natural landscapes to urban areas affects energy and material fluxes. An important aspect of the urban environment is the urban metabolism, and changes in such metabolism need to be considered for sustainable planning decisions. A spatial Decision Support System (DSS) prototyped within the European FP7-funded project BRIDGE (sustainaBle uRban plannIng Decision support accountinG for urban mEtabolism), enables accounting for the urban metabolism of planning actions, by exploiting the current knowledge and technology of biophysical sciences. The main aim of the BRIDGE project was to bridge the knowledge and communication gap between urban planners and environmental scientists and to illustrate the advantages of considering detailed environmental information in urban planning processes. The developed DSS prototype integrates biophysical observations and simulation techniques with socio-economic aspects in five European cities, selected as case studies for the pilot application of the tool. This paper describes the design and implementation of the BRIDGE DSS prototype, illustrates some examples of use, and highlights the need for further research and development in the field.

Highlights

The transformation of landscapes from primarily forest or agricultural uses to urbanised areas modifies energy and material exchanges between the city and its environment. These exchanges define the urban metabolism of a city, which is an important aspect in the functioning of cities [1] and needs to be considered in urban planning
The BRIDGE Decision Support System (DSS) prototype was developed with the potential to evaluate Planning Alternatives (PA) and determine the alternative that better fits the goal of changing the metabolism of urban systems towards sustainability
By changing the user’s preferences in this way, the individual and final appraisal scores change (Figure 8b), but PA3 remains with the highest final score (0.949), followed by PA1 (0.838) and PA2 (0.661)

Summary

Introduction

The transformation of landscapes from primarily forest or agricultural uses to urbanised areas modifies energy and material exchanges between the city and its environment. These exchanges define the urban metabolism of a city, which is an important aspect in the functioning of cities [1] and needs to be considered in urban planning. Urban metabolism studies consider a city as a system and distinguish between energy and material flows. Sustainability for a city is the reduction in metabolic flows, and the increase of human livability, and economic and social aspects of sustainability need to be integrated along with the environmental ones [2]. The city design (defines the urban form and cover), the urban governance (related to the land use and the anthropogenic emissions) and the local and regional climate dynamics affect the energy, water and carbon exchanges between the urban surface and the atmosphere, modifying the respective urban metabolism components

Methods

Results

Conclusion