Urban Resource Assessment, Management, and Planning Tools for Land, Ecosystems, Urban Climate, Water, and Materials—A Review

Abstract

Increasing awareness of global and local climate change and the limited resources of land, surface, water, raw materials, urban green spaces, and biodiversity alter the exigencies of urban development. Already perceivable local climate changes such as heavy rains, droughts, and urban heat islands urge planners to take action. Particularly in densely populated areas, conflicting interests are pre-programmed, and decision making has to include multiple impacts, mutual competition, and interaction with respect to investments into provisioning services. Urban planners and municipal enterprises increasingly work with digital tools for urban planning and management to improve the processes of identifying social or urbanistic problems and redevelopment strategies. For this, they use 2D/3D city models, land survey registers, land use and re-/development plans or other official data. Moreover, they increasingly request data-based planning tools to identify and face said challenges and to assess potential interventions holistically. Thus, this contribution provides a review of 51 current tools. Simple informational tools, such as visualizations or GIS viewers, are widely available. However, databases and tools for explicit and data-based urban resource management are sparse. Only a few focus on integrated assessment, decision, and planning support with respect to impact and cost assessments, real-time dashboards, forecasts, scenario analyses, and comparisons of alternative options.

A Survey on UAV Applications in Smart City Management: Challenges, Advances, and Opportunities

“…A large number of activities of people in cities are constantly influencing urban space and its structure. With the increasing population in cities, urban problems such as environmental pollution and traffic congestion arise frequently, which seriously damage urban space and people's quality of life [20]. These conditions demand higher requirements regarding urban space management.…”

Editorial: Special Issue “Resource Management in Urban Districts—A Contribution to Sustainable Urban Development”

“…Finally, Volk et al ( 2022) [12] provides an overview on state-of-the-art assessment aids and tools in urban resource management that can help stakeholders and decision makers to identify most suitable tools for developing strategies and implementing actions (orange). In this contribution, 51 urban resource assessment, management, and planning tools were reviewed and analysed.…”

Water, Resources, and Resilience: Insights from Diverse Environmental Studies

“…Furthermore, this collection places significant emphasis on the harnessing of advanced technologies and analytical tools, as these have emerged as indispensable instruments in refining our understanding, efficient management, and judicious utilization of water resources [13][14][15]. Computational modeling, data-driven analyses, and the adept use of geographic information systems are fundamental in several of the articles, facilitating precise assessments, predictive simulations, and the identification of emerging trends [16][17][18][19].…”