A Decision Support System for Plant Optimization in Urban Areas with Diversified Solar Radiation

Abstract

Sunshine is an important factor which limits the choice of urban plant species, especially in environments with high-density buildings. In practice, plant selection and configuration is a key step of landscape architecture, which has relied on an experience-based qualitative approach. However, the rationality and efficiency of this need to be improved. To maintain the diversity of plant species and to ensure their ecological adaptability (solar radiation) in the context of sustainable development, we developed the Urban Plants Decision Support System (UP-DSS) for assisting plant selection in urban areas with diversified solar radiation. Our methodology mainly consists of the solar radiation model and calibration, the urban plant database, and information retrieval model. The structure of UP-DSS is also presented at the end of the methodology section, which is based on the platform of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Microsoft Excel. An application of UP-DSS is demonstrated in a residential area of Wuhan, China. The results show that UP-DSS can provide a very scientific and stable tool for the adaptive planning of shade-tolerant plants and photoperiod-sensitive plants, meanwhile, it also provides a specific plant species and the appropriate types of plant community for user decision-making according to different sunshine radiation conditions and the designer's preferences.

A Digital Framework to Predict the Sunshine Requirements of Landscape Plants

“…The instruments and equipment are listed in Section 2.4. In previous studies, we used and verified this approach in the form of a case study [20,21].…”

“…Cercis s, respectively, for the transition from the sub-healthy to healthy status when the other ecological factors are the same. To this end, mapping the laws of health responses is very valuable information for adaptive plant selection and configuration based on the spatial pattern of solar radiation, especially when supported by digital technology, such as geographic information systems and decision support systems [20,21].…”

“…Numerous studies have demonstrated that the contribution of plants to the urban environment is extensive and far-reaching, as plants play an important role in biodiversity conservation [7,8], improving microclimates [9][10][11], relieving air pollution [12,13], enhancing aesthetic value [14], and even influencing the psychological behavior of city dwellers [15,16]. However, urban managers, urban forestry and landscape scientists are more concerned with the sustainable selection and cultivation of plants [17][18][19], these core benefits not only have advantages in planting and management costs, but the eco-functions are also dependent on their survival, growth, development and reproduction [20,21].…”

“…In addition, the variation of sunshine is also very obvious in urban built-up areas, due to the buildings and terrain [31]. Therefore, for urban greening, how to select adaptive plants more intelligently based on their ecological habits has become a research focus and challenge [19,21,32,33].…”

“…It can be seen that the sunshine tolerance for plants is a complex and important research content. Back to the field of landscape architecture, the basic data of landscape plants with regard to solar radiation response act as the key information for the practice of "right plants in the right place", especially for the database construction of decision support systems used for the sustainable selection of trees and shrubs [19,21,32].…”