EPARtwin

Digital Twin for the Analysis and Assessment of Depaving Potentials and Participatory Scenario Creation to Mitigate Urban Heat Islands

New Opportunities for Urban Heat Adaptation Through Innovative Technologies

In dense and heat exposed urban structures, depaving and greening offers huge potentials for a sustainable and health-conserving urban development. Firstly, these measures help to re-establish important soil functions essential to biodiversity, climate regulation, air hygiene and mitigation of weather extremes. Secondly, green spaces are paramount for public life, providing a place for various activities such as sports, leisure, regeneration, cooling off and connecting with friends and neighbours.

Because of the currently low automatization of identifying and assessing areas with depaving potential, depaving remains under-used. The research and development project EPARtwin, funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy as part of the Central Innovation Programme for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), aims to develop a technology and AI based process to efficiently identify and prioritise depaving potentials in a digital urban twin, while taking into account and balancing environmental, economic and social sustainability. The digital urban twin provides innovative solutions both for the technical and the communicatory challenges. Selected areas (“intervention spaces”) can be made available as a participation environment within the digital twin, using Augmented Reality (AR) to clearly communicate the results of the analyses as well as to visualise certain depaving scenarios in participatory planning processes.

About the Project

To identify and rate potential areas for depaving and to use the analysis results in participatory scenario creation, a tool with multiple innovative components is designed and tested. 

• Depaving analysis with Artificial Intelligence (AI): Using various AI tools, selected study areas are analysed for their depaving potential. Important parameters are the built environment – especially sealed surface above and below the ground, spatial use, legal boundaries as well as climatological and sociodemographic factors. The analysis excludes areas without depaving potential and assesses the feasibility as well as sustainability implications of depaving scenarios in the remaining area. 
• Data provision and integration in the digital urban twin: The base data is catalogued in a “common data environment” (CDE). The CDE then provides data for the depaving analyses. The results are then re-integrated into the CDE. A digital urban twin is developed for visualising the status quo, analyses and depaving scenarios using CityGML 3.0.
• AR participation environment in the digital urban twin: An AR participation environment is implemented into the urban digital twin to facilitate the visual communication of analysis results, to conduct surveys and to engage actors from city administration, politics and civil society in the development of depaving scenarios.

The project follows an iterative process of technological development and testing in the study area, aiming to pilot the tool in real planning processes in the associated model cities of Hannover and Magdeburg.

Areas of practical application

The Tool EPARtwin will be integrated into the services offered by the commercial partner GEO-NET Umweltconsulting GmbH, providing cities with an automated and reliable basis for planning and decision-making in climate adaptation to urban heat and heavy rain, in the improvement of green spaces as well as in a sustainable and health-promoting urban development. Important aspects are, furthermore, the extended possibilities for civic participation within strategic and planning processes. The EPARtwin tool has great potential to be used in the following areas of application:

• Depaving cadastres and strategies: Creating a depaving cadastre from the identified areas with depaving potential, developing a depaving strategy using the prioritisation of the identified areas for depaving.
• Urban climate analysis and climate adaptation strategy: Identifying hot spots resulting from urban density and sealed surface, defining “intervention spaces” for adaptation measures. 
• Climatological Assessments: Preventative Analysis of consequences from sealing surfaces in the preparatory and binding land-use planning, analysis of climatological conditions in redevelopment areas and deducting recommendations for action.

Wissenschaftlicher Beitrag der Fachhochschule Erfurt

The Erfurt University of Applied Sciences, represented by the chair of geodesy and geoinformatics as well as the ISP – Institute for urban research, planning and communication, accompanies the project scientifically, leading the following work packages:

• Requirements analysis and system architecture, 
• Refining open source AI applications for identifying sealed surface and tree cover,
• Developing the CDE and digital urban twin,
• Testing and evaluating the AR participation environment,
• Holding events and conducting stakeholder surveys,
• Documentation and knowledge transfer through publications and conferences.