LifeWatercool web tool will help urban planners with city climate design

A web tool aims to help professional urban planners in decision-making to implement climate adaptation strategies in cities based on the experience of Seville, both in design and planning, techniques that can be extrapolated to urban areas of other cities.

The tool has been designed within the framework of the LIFE WaterCool project, co-financed by the European Union, which addresses climate adaptation in Seville, with actions to be carried out with the support of the urban water network managed by Empresa Metropolitana de Abastecimiento y Saneamiento de Aguas de Sevilla, S.A. (Emasesa).

The website has been designed as a pilot project by the technology consultancy SDOS, a partner in the LIFE Water Cool project, and will initially include geographic information from Seville, with the subsequent aim that the adaptation actions can be adapted to other cities or regions.

The tool is divided into three modules deployed between the definition of the area to be worked on, the implementation of improvement actions and the visualization of expected results, respectively.

Using 3D techniques, the urban planner will be able to navigate through a plan, select and section the area to be worked on and move the objects present in the section or edit their properties.

Through the “Decision support system (DSS)” mechanism, it will be possible to deduce how each of the actions influences the area to be worked on, by showing the results with different ecological alternatives and to know their impact by analyzing the best option, according to SDOS sources.

The tool proposes to define a catalog of possible ecological actions to be applied and will be nourished, among other sources, by the objective results of the field work.

The DSS will be designed for small-scale urban areas such as parks or streets in a block, areas of action in the LIFE Water Cool project, which will work on Avenida de la Cruz Roja and the confluence with Doctor Jiménez Díaz and Manuel Villalobos streets, in the Macarena neighborhood.

The data sources will be geographically coordinated to display a map when selecting the area to work and to have as much urban information as possible: buildings, facade types, trees, temperature of the area or traffic, among other data.

In the case of designing a wooded area, the tool allows to modify parameters such as height, trunk radius or crown, with species adapted to climate change.

The aim is also for the website to be a collaborative management tool from both a public and private perspective, and it is designed to work in an integrated way with different organizations.

In this sense, once the study has been completed, the urban planner will be able to model his climate change adaptation strategy for a street through the web-based decision support system and the public agency will study the case.

Once approved, the new action can be assessed in a mobile application, the “Urban laboratory and adaptation office’, which is also designed within the scope of the LIFE Water Cool project, in order to promote the responsible and sustainable use of resources and encourage citizen participation in the fight against climate change.

The ‘Urban laboratory and adaptation office’ is another tool that acts as a complement to the website for citizens to assess the functionality of the different models proposed. EFE

Information provided by EFEverde of Agencia EFE and published as part of its participation in the European Union’s Life WaterCool project.

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The contents of this document reflect the views only of the authors and the European Union/EASME is not responsible for the use of its contents.
the European Union/EASME is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained herein.
for any use that may be made of the information contained herein.

About LIFE18 CCA/ES/001122