Leonie Lux
Chair of Architectural Informatics Department of Architecture Technical University of Munich
Powerful Greens
2 Powerful Greens Chair of Architectural Informatics Prof. Dr.-Ing. Frank Petzold Sustainable Spaces | Shared Futures Nick Förster, Sarah L. Jenney, Ivan Bratoev Leonie 03664397Lux
3 2624221816141064 ContactOutlookDiscussionFinalPrototypingConceptIdeationResearchIntroduction&ScenarioImplementation Table of Contents
The project “Powerful Greens” suggests a solution of communicating possible green interventions to citizens. To support them in extending their knowledge about a topic that is becoming more and more relevant.
The urban heat island effect (UHI) is a phenomenon of increased temperatures in urban areas compared to their rural surroundings (Alavipanah et al., 2015, p.1). Surfaces in the city heat up within a day and also store the heat when the air temperature drops at night, continuing to release heat. “There are various causes for the formation of the UHI in the cities. The important factors causing the UHI are the high fraction of built-up areas (Buildings and pavements) as well as the lack of vegetation.” (Sodoudi, et al. 2014, pp.1-2).
The absence of green and sealed surfaces not only cause problems during hot periods, non-resilient urban environments can also be harmed in cases of heavy rainfall or cold periods because they lack abilities to compensate Therestress.are many possible interventions to combat the urban heat island on the level of urban ecological resilience: Increasing urban green, unsealing surfaces, constructing green roofs and green facades, or high albedo pavements. Rivers and lakes also can have a big impact on a city’s temperature (see: Brandenburg, et al., 2018). Scientific experts and planning authorities already are aware of the problem and are starting to develop strategies to implement these interventions for a more resilient urban environment. Vienna for example has released a strategic plan, listing a variety of possible interventions within the urban context (see: Brandenburg, et al., 2018).
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During the winter semester at the chair of architectural informatics at Munich Technical University, we developed tools that are able to support planning authorities in developing the city under sustainable aspects. As examples of Cooperatives like Wagnis e.V. and Kooperative Großstadt, or associations like Green City e.V. show: People are interested to develope neighbourhoods and urban space in cooperation for an ecofriendly urban future.
5 Introduction
6 Research
However, after proceeding with the concept, the use of ENVI-Met became reduntant for the prototype. The concept shifted towards a rather informative approach. This included not only analysing the effect of trees, but also other interventions. Simulating everything in ENVI-Met would have been impossible in the small amount of time. The rise of urban heat is strongly connected to urbanization (see: Alavipanah, et al., 2015). Their study is based on a survey from 2002 to 2012 to analyse the connection of rising surface temperatures due to land cover and the possibilities of mitigation through urban vegetation in Munich, Germany.
The authors conclude that the trend “shows cooler surface temperatures where the proportion of urban vegetation is between seventy to eighty percent.”. The conclusion also lines out that “[s]tudies on the thermal properties of UHIs and urban vegetation distribution, […] [improve] our understanding of urban ecology and moderating urban outdoor thermal comfort and quality of life with ecosystem services […].” (Alavipanah, et al., 2015, pp. 4702-4703).
The terms “sustainable interventions” or “sustainable urbanism” in this brochure are going to be used to describe measures that are taken to achieve environmental resilience. Like for example developing the urban environment in a way that it can autonomously resist the extreme change of weather, as well as to provide elements to improve pedestrian comfort or supporting the protection of biodiversity.
The concept was approached via research on several topics about the urban heat island (UHI): Detection and simulation, effects on urban environment, human comfort and health, and strategies for mitigation. In the beginning, the research concerned simulations of urban areas before and after several green interventions. The simulation-tool ENVI-Met is a good tool to test the influence of green in the urban environment. (Chokachian, et al. 2017, p.4, Nadianmehr, 2015, pp. 28, ff.).
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With this knowledge, it was possible to extend the research towards how various green interventions influence urban environments: An extensive catalogue of Munich Technical University analyses different possibilities to implement green strategies into the urban contexts of Munich and Würzburg (see: Brasche, et al., 2018). The catalogue defines several choices of urban green, depending on the context: The old town, the block, and the row development. For each individual urban building type, the catalogue analyses and suggests the best possible and most effective strategies. (Brasche et al. pp. 37 ff). For the implementation of the concept, four strategies were chosen: Trees, unsealed surface, green roofs, and green facades as possible choices for the user. In the further research, the effects of trees and of unsealed surface were prioritized: According to Doick and Hutchings (2013), trees provide several mechanisms, such as shading, reflectance of sunlight, and evapotranspiration to cool their
The guideline for climate-oriented communites in bavaria thematizes possible interventions
8 environment (pp. 2-3). Unsealed surface is another good strategy to mitigate the UHI. “[…] unsealed environments allow for improvement in the soil’s absorbing capacity.” (Fokaides, et al. 2016, p.1146). If a percentage of the land is going to be allowed to breathe and absorb water, water retention is going to be achieved, which is then going to allow the surface to cool it’s environment by evapotranspiration. (Foikades, et al., 2016, p. 1145).
Since the prototype should become a tool for information transmission it had to be made sure that every conclusion the user could draw from using it, would have scientific proof. By choosing several studies concerning the different aspects of what would be implemented, this intention could be insured.
Considering that heat has a direct impact on people’s comfort and health (Alavipanah, et al., 2015, p. 4690), one can conclude that by implementing green interventions which help to cool down the environment, one indirectly influences people’s wellbeing. Finally, one can state that people’s health is improved by resilient urban conditions.
The next step was to find out about how different persona groups react to heat: Numerous studies exist about the vulnerability of the elderly in times of strong heat waves. One study analyses causes of death over the age of 65 in nine European cities during the summer of 2003. In this year, Europe experienced one of the worst heat waves in recent history (see: D’Ippoliti et al. 2010). The study states: “We found that the impact on daily mortality increases with age.” (p. 6). Another study analyses the impact of heat on public health in Phoenix, Arizona (see: Harlan, et al., 2006).
waves on mortality in 9 European cities: results from the EuroHEAT project. Environmental Health. 9(37). http://www.ehjournal.net/content/9/1/37
9References
Leitfaden für klimaorientierte Kommunen. Landschaftsentwicklung. wzw. IslandSodoudi,green-infrastructure/https://www.landschaftsentwicklung.wzw.tum.de/en/research/past-projects/mitigation-and-urban-S.,Shahmohamadi,P.,Vollack,K.,Cubasch,U.&Che-Ani,A.I.(2014).MitigatingtheUrbanHeatEffectinMegacityTehran.
Hindawi Publishing Corporation. https://doi.org/10.1155/2014/547974
Alavipanah, S., Wegmann, M., Qureshi, S., Weng, Q., Koellner, T., (2015). The Role of Vegetation in Mitigating Urban Land Surface Temperatures: A Case Study of Munich, Germany during the Warm Season. Sustainability, 7(4). https://doi.org/10.3390/su7044689
Fokaides, P.A., Kylili, A., Nicolaou, L., Ioannou, B., (2016). The effect of soil sealing on the urban heat island phenomenon. Indoor and Built Environment, 25(7). 1136-1147. DOI: 10.1177/1420326X16644495
Harlan, S.L., Brazel, A.J., Prashad, L., Stefanov, W.L., Larsen, L. (2006). Neighbourhood microclimates and vulnerability to heat stress. Social Science & Medicine. 63. 2847-2863. Nadianmehr, R., (2015). Quantitative assessment of mitigation measures on pedestrian thermal comfort within urban canyon. (Master thesis, Vienna University of Technology). repositum.tuwien.at. https:// Technischerepositum.tuwien.at/handle/20.500.12708/7151UniversitätMünchen.(2018).
Chokhachian, A., Santucci, D., Auer, T., (2017). A Human-Centered Approach to Enhance Urban Resilience, Implications and Application to Improve Outdoor Comfort in Dense Urban Spaces. Buildings, 7(4). D‘Ippolitihttps://doi.org/10.3390/buildings7040113etal.(2010).Theimpactofheat
Brandenburg, C., Damyanovic D., Reinwald, F., Allex, B., Gantner, B., Czachs, C., (2018). Urban Heat Island Strategy. wien.gz.at. https://www.wien.gv.at/umweltschutz/raum/uhi-strategieplan.html
Doick, K. & Hutchings, T. (2013). Air Temperature regulation by urban trees and green infrastructure. Forestry Comission. Forest Research. https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/documents/1708/FCRN012.pdf
Ideation and Scenario
The idea was reshaped several times. As cited in the research, people’s comfort in the urban climate is influenced by heat and therefore also by urban green. To underline the necessity and the value of urban green zones, there was an attempt to link people’s “play-and-stay-preferences” to hot and cool areas. But since people are influenced by several different factors, additional to what they would usually prefer as their environment, the concept had to be Anotherreshaped.part of the ideation was to evaluate how various interventions could have different impacts on the urban environment. The result was an interactive design-tool for citizens that could be used during a guided workshop with a planning-expert, to discuss green interventions on a neighbourhood-scale.
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The user can choose from various green and blue interventions to put into a selected pre-defined urban area. Next, the finished designs could be compared with each other and would be rated after different aspects like biodiversity, microclimate, improvement of air-quality, etc.
The input-lectures of Perspektive München and Green City expressed a need for good communication-tools. Especially in times of the pandemic people are isolated and cannot attend district committee meetings and consequently, involving them in discussions is becoming harder. In the beginning of the semester, the ideation-storyboard addressed the urban heat island effect within a non-expert context. The urban heat island still is a problem, a great number of citizens are not aware of. The idea was chosen for further development with the major intention to transmit a clear message about a complex topic.
11 TwoIdeation:storyboards about how to address the urban heat island effect
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Scenario: The urge for a sustainable urban environment in Munich, has been addressed several times on the newspaper (see: Wetzel, Süddeutsche, 2021, Engels Abendzeitung, 2020). The fact that the urban heat island effect plays a key role in the combat of climate change is commonly known amongst academics and politicians. Nevertheless, it is still a complex topic that requires a certain amount of background knowledge and research to fully understand its context.
Within the further development of the ideation both aspects – human comfort, as well as the abilities of green interventions - were combined in a tool that is targeting to empower citizens by educating them.
Supposing that a heterogenous urban society has different aspects that influence their everyday life, this society still has in common that their quarters and neighbourhoods are affected by political decisions. Therefore, the concept-scenario concernes the average citizen who needs to be aware of- and to understand, the decisions made, connected to sustainable urbanism. People also need to be able to picture possible green interventions and their effects. When municipalities debate over the further development of a certain neighbourhood, an appropriate information-tool could enable citizens to better understand the necessity of certain decisions and to also build a more competent opinion themselves.
The tool could be provided by municipalities to people who can use it within the comfort of their own homes. To help developing the city into a more resilient environment, necessary changes could be addressed with the tool and enable people to take part in the discussion. It is a tool for the early design stage of sustainable reinforcements of neighbourhoods but could also be used in a participatory planning-process of a completely new district.
CITIZENSMUNICIPALITIES SCIENTIFIC EXPERTS AND PLANNERS vote for Access information Access information SuggestDeliverfacts/SuggestsolutionsDeliverfacts/solutionsDecide about public projects and finances SupportingScenario: the citizen in understanding complex discussions about the urban environment
People need to understand why decisions are made, why politicians discuss removing parking spaces for tress, why their built environment is not resilient to extreme weather conditions. They also need to understand how climate conditions affect their everyday life.
“Powerful Greens” tries to answer the question of how the abilities of green space within the urban context can be communicated. The approach is to raise awareness of the topic via gamification to teach: An intuitive game in which the user can place different components into an urban context to see them react to their environment. The concept is targeting the self-empowerment of citizens to be able to understand how various aspects interact with each
To access and understand relevant information can be rather hard, assuming a person does not have an academic or topic related background. Nevertheless, if a debate is affecting this person’s environment, there needs to be a way to bring the discussion to a common ground.
confronts the user with a virtual urban context in an extreme weather condition: extreme heat or heavy rainfall. The interface offers the user to try out various approaches towards sustainable urbanism. The choice is to place several elements into the virtual world where he or she can gain knowledge about how the placed characters or urban sectors are affected by extreme weather conditions. The omnipresent choice, independent to different scenarios, is to try out different sustainable interventions either in the street but also different architectural components: One possibility is to let the user compare how separate persona groups react to heat. By doing so, it increases the understanding of how vulnerable groups are affected, especially the elderly but also young children. Furthermore, by placing different green components into the urban environment, the user can find out about the abilities of the proposed four interventions: Trees and unsealed surface but also architectural elements like
Gamification to teach
Theother.game
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15 green facades and green roofs. Characters can be placed under a tree to recover from the influence of the sun and information is being provided about how these green elements can cool down their environment. The information varies, depending on the selected weather condition. In this way it becomes clear how the “Powerful Greens” offer several positive abilities depending on the circumstances. By choosing examples most users can relate to, one can expect that people will gain a better understanding of the complexity of our environment. In this way, the debate becomes more transparent.
Prototyping
The problem related to both prototypes is that the indicators are very hard to measure. To draw a conclusion about how much a certain number of trees could cool the environment, it would be necessary to run a heat-simulation. But because the urban heat island is influenced by numerous factors such as wind, location, built-up areas, and duration of the heat-period. Not everything can be included in the prototype and therefore the data would be inaccurate. Having come to this conclusion, the concept for the implementation dispensed the simulation-part to concentrate on clear information visualization. This could be easily implemented in Unity.
The low-fidelity paper-prototype consists of three different interfaces: Main template, Design template, and design-overview and rating. The user can draw a lot of different environmental interventions on the design-template or decide to upload an existing design and file them in project-folders. Further, the finished designs can be evaluated in the folder by their influence on single aspects like biodiversity or the microclimate (fig. 1-2).
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The implementation concept proposes a sealed urban area in which the user can make trees grow by using a slider to check how many trees would influence the temperature within the area. In this way, he or she is going to learn about the correlation of urban greenery and urban heat. The user can eventually check how the interventions have influenced the local temperature and then decide if the game should be ended or if another element should be implemented (fig.3).
Fig. 3 Concept where the user can make green interventions appear using a slider; The user can gain information about the cooling impact of trees on their environment.
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Fig. 2 Evaluation-template in the paper-prototype: Several designs can be compared with each other
Paper Prototype Implementation Concept
Fig. 1 Design-template in the paper-prototype: The user can draw several interventions
Final Implementation
The final implementation was made with Unity. It is made of a 3-dimensional environment and 2-dimensional sprites which can be placed into the world by pressing a button. The prototype contains three scenes: The start and two weather scenarios. The user has a choice of four characters from different persona groups (children, adults, athletes, seniors) and four green interventions (trees, unsealed surface, green roofs, green facades).
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In the implemented prototype it is possible to place the child-character into the world. The character is animated with three animations that play in a row. By observing the character, the user can conclude how the child is feeling. If the character continues to be exposed to heat, it stops playing and eventually sits down. The information referring to the character changes with implemented animation-events and can be accessed on the left side of the screen: At the end of a short statement about the danger of heat, a button can be clicked to read further information which will lead the user to a URL opening in the browser for extensive information.
To help the character recovering from strong heat stress, trees can be placed in the environment to put the child into a shaded area. The user can then observe how the child is getting better in the shade. Again, information can be accessed by clicking the information icon on the tree to gain knowledge about how trees provide cooling effects in a hot environment. The tree informationpanel offers a link to open an article, further explaining the cooling-mechanisms of Bytrees.selecting the rain-button, the weather changes. While the green interventions stay the same, the user gets a new choice of affected elements. Instead of persona-groups one can now choose from different urban elements. To compare the abilities of green interventions, the user can place them again into the environment of heavy rain and by accessing the information-panels, is going to understand how the selected elements are able to compensate not only one, but several extreme weather conditions.
19 Implemented Prototype in Unity
20 Trees Children Green Roofs Athletes SurfaceUnsealed Adults Green Facades Seniors Persona GroupsGreen Interventions
21 Evaluate green interventions in different wheather scenarios
The animation still bugs when the child gets dragged out of the shadow into the sun; sometimes it does not trigger a new cycle of animation. The reason is unclear. It also could have been helpful to implement a mechanism to be able to delete interventions or characters from the world, if one decides that certain elements are not needed anymore. There are several points that the prototype is still lacking or are worth being discussed: At this moment, the user is only able to place objects and see effects. There is no option of giving feedback to the planning authorities. Since the tool intends to empower people to understand about sustainable
22 Discussion
The game can be closed by pressing the exit button. The application mainly works by activating Game objects in the menu and placing them into the world. This works with the Raycast- and the ScreenPointToRay-Function to spawn a blueprint of the object in the position of the mouse-cursor. When clicked, the real prefab spawns in the very position on the terrain.
All the Game objects are prefabs, storing different functions. The Child contains an animator that interacts with the directional light. It detects the light source with a raycast and checks if the light hits the object. If it does, the animation transitions forward. If the object is not hit by the light, the animation transitions backwards. Each animation is connected to animation events that change the status-panels of the character to provide further information about the character’s states.
The intervention-prefabs contain a script that clamps their information panels to their individual position. The panels can be opened and closed with buttons. Every information-panel also provides an URL to access studies on the browser. A short script was added to it, so the user can click on a button for further information to open the related study.
As lined out in the final implementation part, the application was built in Unity 3D. It contains three scenes which can be changed by button click-events.
looking at the different advantages of these interventions, the room of action could differ. People could understand that there can be different ways to implement sustainable strategies on the street-level but that the architectural elements can also be as powerful. In this way, it would open room for discussion if the best environmental choice is always a tree or if there are other strategies that could have a similar effect on the environment as for example green roofs, blue roofs and green facades. It can be argued that the prototype works well as far as it is implemented but that it still carries potential for improvement.
23 urbanism, it could be interesting to ask for their feedback within the game. It could be argued though, that the game rather intends to fully inform people about a certain topic. The feedback on the other hand, could be given after people had finished playing the game and gained the knowledge the game provides. The feedback would subsequently not be a priority of the project even though it could be interesting to reshape the concept to try to find an opportunity of fitting it in.
Looking back on the ideation process, it could have been interesting to concentrate more detailed on the different possible green interventions. The intention in which the prototype was made can be interpreted very clearly. Nevertheless, one could imagine implementing a rating-system within the prototype to evaluate different interventions by their feasibility in different weather scenarios. It would make the intention of the prototype even more clear if users could see which interventions were especially effective against heat or Furthermore,rain.
If the concept progressed, it could grow into a game with several levels, each targeting a different topic related to urban resilience. To ensure that the user understands to the max that different interventions can have different effects, it could be interesting to set the user a new task in every new level. After accomplishing the task, the user would have gained extensive knowledge concerning one subject in urban resilience.
Reflecting on the semester, I found it challenging to position myself in the design process as someone who stands between the expert and the target group. As architects we usually are faced with a task we need to solve. In architectural informatics, one first needs to understand how digital tools can be used by different target groups to define the problem.
In summary, the game carries potential of eventually becoming a playful approach to the entire cosmos of possible green and blue interventions within the urban context to teach people what kind of elements hold the greatest potential to be implemented in their neighbourhoods. In the best case, this game could take the conversation about sustainable urban development to the next level: Collaboration between planners and citizens could become more interactive and fruitful, since both parties can discuss sustainable urbanism equally.
The scenarios of extreme heat and extreme rain could be expanded with other subjects influenced by green environment: For example biodiversity, air quality, and pedestrian comfort. Changing the perspective from the streetlevel to a larger scale, participants could be taught about the influence of architectural elements like green- or blue roofs. Introducing more heterogenous choices, the dialogue on how the urban environment can be changed could be widened and offer new perspectives.
24 Outlook
critiques and open-help-sessions were very helpful to reshape the concept and to finally get a better understanding of the topic. The input-lectures of the planning authorities also were very interesting. I would have liked though, to learn about digital references in the beginning of the semester, to get even more into the theory of the project. In conclusion, the semester was very insightful and interesting. I am taking a lot with me and I am encouraged to expand my newly gained knowledge in future projects.
Possible additional scenario: Learn about possible architectural interventions
Zoom on intervention: Sealed LackParkingsurfaceareaofgreenspace
25 Neighbourhood Housing / ShopsParking Space/ Drive throughHousingGarages
InfacadeSouth-facade:Muchbiotop-creationspacefortreesGreenmyopinion,the
Numerous potentials: Flat roofs for greening and
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