Simulating Ecological Connectivity and River Behaviour for Dynamic Territorial Mapping

Abstract

Centres to human life, cities represent the main threat to fine ecological balances, which are in turn responsible at multiple levels for the health of citizens. Metropolitan areas are therefore key in addressing such issues to maintain the wellbeing of all living things. Within today’s digital culture, designers have the opportunity to face these unprecedented challenges by approaching landscape under a dynamic, collective, multidisciplinary and multiscalar perspective, enabled through data driven design. These frameworks have the potential to empower designers to engage with nature as an active partner, through a set of new elements and tools to understand, represent and create these landscapes. The article discusses an experimental methodology for design and planning processes that detect and amplify potential and beneficial ecological connections within urban areas, providing an opportunity to consciously design for, and within, climate change adaptation.