Support for municipalities in climate change adaptation

Researchers from the HTWG and other institutions are using the example of the city of Constance to help draw data-based conclusions for climate-resilient urban planning with regard to water, heat, and vegetation. Measures are to be taken on the basis of Copernicus data.

Copernicus is the European Union's Earth observation program, "Europe's eye on Earth." Copernicus services provide vast amounts of global data in near real-time from satellites and ground-based, airborne, and sea-based monitoring systems. The information services are free and openly accessible. The data can also be used for local and regional needs. "So far, however, this wealth of information has hardly been used by municipalities because there are no practical tools for urban planning with which remote sensing data can be merged with local data, combined in a meaningful way, and further processed and applied in municipal planning processes," says Prof. Dr.-Ing. Michael Bühler, professor of construction economics, construction economics, and construction (business) process management at HTWG. He is the co-initiator and leader for the HTWG of the CoKLIMAx research project, which is being carried out by a consortium of researchers from HTWG, the University of Stuttgart, the Technical University of Munich, Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS), Helmholtz-Zentrum hereon GmbH together with the city of Constance. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research is funding the project with a total of around one million euros, with HTWG receiving approximately 330,000 euros and the city of Constance 216,000 euros. The funding is provided within the framework of the announcement "Development and Implementation Preparation of Copernicus Services for Public Needs on Climate Adaptation Strategies for Municipal Applications in Germany". The project duration is two and a half years.

Competencies in the fields of digitization and sustainability combined

The Constance City Council unanimously approved the CoKLIMAx project with no abstentions. "The city of Constance is pleased to be able to collaborate with HTWG on the development of digital solutions for climate-friendly urban planning. The CoKLIMAx project has enormous potential to drive the digital transformation of the city of Konstanz. The focus for us is on the high practical benefits in many areas. The collaboration with HTWG can therefore greatly help us to better achieve our goals for sustainable urban development - in line with our Smart Green City strategy," said Constance Mayor Uli Burchardt. Prof. Dr. Gunnar Schubert, Vice President Research, Transfer and Sustainability at HTWG, says: "The project exemplifies how HTWG can support external partners with application-oriented research. It is particularly important for us to be able to contribute our expertise in the areas of digitization and sustainability - ideally combined in this project."

The effects and consequences of the climate crisis have a particularly striking impact on cities. This is due to the high spatial concentration of people, buildings, technical infrastructure, economic output, and social and cultural activities. Therefore, the research team will work on the example of the city of Constance. Prof. Bühler is convinced: "Urban planning will change fundamentally in the course of digitalization." The project aims to develop low-threshold tools and efficient work processes on how municipalities can retrieve, process, evaluate, and apply Copernicus data. "This includes giving decision-makers direct access to the data in a visualized form to derive insights and decision support," explains Prof. Bühler.

The researchers are focusing on the application contexts of heat, water, and vegetation as examples. IT tools and processes are to be developed to process climate resilience concerns such as microclimate, cold and fresh air circulation, specification and configuration of multifunctional green and open spaces, precipitation, and water management. This will enable informed, data-based decisions within climate change-related risk and crisis management.  

Exemplary use cases as a beacon

The results achieved within the framework of CoKLIMAx are already being used and evaluated as examples during the project. On the one hand, the quality improvement and efficiency increase of work processes of municipal task areas made possible by this are to be proven and optimized. On the other hand, the presentation of exemplary use cases is to act as a beacon so that further potential users are addressed in a target-oriented manner. In order to ensure and actively promote this subsequent use, a broad concept has already been developed in the run-up to the project on how the results can be transferred and further processed. For example, the data will be accessible to all municipalities in Germany via a high-performance server operated by Copernicus Deutschland.

The consortium leader, the city of Constance, as a municipal user of satellite data for climate-resilient urban planning, will conduct a comprehensive requirements analysis to maximize the benefits for municipal stakeholders in the administration. For this, the city will actively co-design solutions to make Copernicus data use more user-friendly and usable for municipalities in Germany.

The HTWG subproject addresses the scientific-methodological side of the identification, interpretation, and value-added use of geospatial, climate, and environmental remote sensing information based on sources such as Copernicus and the C3S Climate Data Store by municipal actors in urban, building, and transport planning against the background of climate adaptation and environment. With the focus of this subproject on the interface between data use by municipalities and the scientific-technical conception and implementation of IT tools for data retrieval, processing, merging and presentation, the HTWG subproject will create the crucial foundations and solution concepts for efficient and powerful data use as well as practical design and functional structure of the methods and tools to be developed.

For students, the project offers the opportunity to better understand urban planning processes and to participate concretely in final and project work. CoKLIMAx is therefore looking for interested research assistants as early as November.

Further information:

• International publication of the CoKLIMAx consortium in the Swiss scientific journal MDPI "Remote Sensing" on the topic: "Application of Copernicus Data for Climate-Relevant Urban Planning Using the Example of Water, Heat, and Vegetation".
• For more information, listen to the podcast from the Constance City Council on September 23, 2021 (agenda item 4).
• This article has been translated from HTWG website