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.