TNA project : Exploring Urban Design and habitat connectivity in a virtual collaboration structure

Acronym : 115-Exploring Urban Design and habitat connectivity in a virtual collaboration structure-Koelking

Project Lead : Christina Koelking From : ILPOE

Dates : from to

Description :

Urban planning considers increasingly the urban landscape as a mosaic of built up and green infrastructure (GI). The task of green infrastructure is to support the floristic and faunistic biodiversity of urban areas which deliver ecosystem services that contribute to welfare, sustainability and resilience of the urban environment. This facilitates the control of most components of the urban water balance, thermal and air quality effects - and in addition to its fundamental contribution to the recreational and living qualities of neighborhoods. It is not a new strategy to implement green roofs and green facades to actively enhance and support existing green infrastructures, not only with regard to quantity but also with regard to improve connectivity and to build up functioning ecological habitat networks for maximizing faunistic biodiversity. Ecological scientific knowledge of species movement and habitat requirements of invertebrates (provided by University of East London - UEL) will be integrated into the GIS-based simulation model GIS-walk (provided by Institute of Landscape Planning ILPOE - University of Stuttgart). The Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE) environment of the HLRS in Stuttgart is providing the unique opportunity to visualize the results of the GIS-based simulation model and to manipulate interactively and iteratively the virtual urban environment. Hereby the workflow of the process uses simultaneously virtual reality visualization and animal movement simulation. The latter provides a fruitful tool to evaluate the ecological efficiency of green Infrastructure, because individual exchange is a key for maintaining biodiversity in highly fragmented landscapes. The objectives of the project are to install a collaboration structure that combines expertise of UEL in urban bio-ecology and research on efficiency of GI modeling of invertebrate movement depending on habitat quality in fragmented patch- matrix landscapes at ILPOE experience and high-level skills at HLRS to build up interactive virtual urban environments In addition we include Helix Pflanzensysteme GmbH for advice with regard to visual and constructional aspects of green facades and green walls.