GIS and Design in Harmony with Esri’s GeoDesign Solutions Platform

By Nadia Amoroso


With globalization, population growth, climate change, and increasing demands for resources, today’s designers of the built environment are challenged with serious and complex issues when planning cities and spaces. There is an inherit responsibility to design with nature, providing the most suitable ways to suppress weakness, subdue threats, enhance opportunities and foster the strengths of the site through great designs. Imagine using site data to help craft smarter designs that meet program objectives and overall goals.

GeoDesign is a new and innovative way of designing the built environment, fusing both nature and geography with design. Not just another technology to add on to an already crowded field of design programs, GeoDesign meshes design with value-based information to help designers, planners and stakeholders make better-informed decisions.

GeoDesign technology offers a set of robust tools that supports rapid evaluation of design alternatives against the impacts of those designs. Esri Inc, the global mapping and GIS company (established in 1969), has developed a set of tools, which combined together form the GeoDesign Solutions Platform. The technology is a powerful extension to GIS that incorporates 2D and 3D creative site analysis, sketching and diagramming, 3D modeling, BIM for urban design and other critical aspects as an integral part of the design process. Think of GeoDesign as a design extension from GIS, powerfully leveraging site data to produce real smart plans, and turning data into understandable datascapes.

Esri’s GeoDesign Solutions Platform combines sketching and modeling tools with the power of geo-data to integrate information, offering a seamless work flow that provides the designer with the tools needed to make smart design decisions.

In the GeoDesign process, Esri’s GeoPlanner for ArcGIS (web-based application) enables users to create, analyze, and report on planning alternatives and scenarios through an easy to use interface. By combining web-based analytics, sketching tools and dashboards, designers and planners can visualize design impacts in real time. Using performance indicators applied to multiple scenarios, the designer can select a wise option that is supported by data. Site suitability can be assessed by combining factors such as slope, aspect, population, and distance to water to understand risks in the planning area. Compare and evaluate development scenarios using dashboards and get real time feedback.

Once the analysis has been done, designers can then import their work onto ArcGIS Pro, where they can perform further analysis on shadows, wind speed, flooding, site water issues, solar radiation, glare and viewshed, all in 3D and within the context of the surrounding built environment. ArcGISPro has a ribbon interface (similar to other 3D modeling and CAD programs) that is easy to use. Populate the landscape with various tree species with the click of a button, or quickly draw and extrude realistic buildings, all in 3D. Because urban plans are attached to data, all changes to the design will reflect changing impacts on the site.

At this stage the project can easily be imported into CityEngine to create smart urban developments that respect zoning laws, reflect the site analysis and show future possibilities. CityEngine allows the user to stipulate, visualize, analyze, and store zoning regulations in 3D. This allows the designer to get instant feedback reporting, making it simple to compare planning proposals and analyze designs. CityEngine can be used to model plan recommendations, using its form-based zoning code as inputs for parametric modeling. The resulting 3D masterplans can help with public engagement during stakeholder meetings, and allow the public to understand and see the new shape of the city.

At a recent GeoDesign Summit at Esri’s headquarters in Redlands, professionals and academics showcased their projects using the Esri GeoDesign Platform: GeoPlanner, ArcGIS Pro, and CityEngine. These powerful tools have become part of a strategic design approach to help them overcome design challenges. It was exciting to see how these professionals have used this new technology to create smart designs to combat complex problems, shaping resilient cities and landscapes supported by evidence-based feedback. Kongjian Yu, Professor and Dean, College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Peking University and President and Principal Designer Turenscape, speaks about the power of GeoDesign and the need to use the GeoDesign technology to understand complex issues and create new design solutions. Professor Yu’s company has been a world leader in using GIS technology and landscape architecture to understand and integrate water systems, biological systems and cultural heritage. With these tools he has helped to plan the location of new cities in China, cities that will not put a strain on the natural ecology of the site. Turenscape has used GeoDesign to plan and implement the restoration of watersheds in highly polluted cities, thus providing storm water management, wildlife habitat, and areas of natural beauty for the citizens. Kongjian Yu believes GeoDesign is not just a reasonable way of designing, but also more compellingly, a matter of survival. GeoDesign is the solution to complex problems.

Please refer to this link for further information:

Esri’s Geodesign Platform and link to Gartner Report.

TED TALK on GeoDesign by Jack Dangermond, President and Founder of Esri

Demo Overview of Geodesign Platform: GeoPlanner, ArcGIS Pro, CityEngine

Opening Remarks from the 2015 Geodesign Summit.

Lecture by Carl Steinitz, Professor of Landscape Architecture and Planning, Emeritus, Harvard’s GSD

Lecture by Kongjian Yu, Professor and Dean, College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Peking University and President and Principal Designer of Turenscape

Special thanks to research assistant Adele Pierre.

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Geodesign- a Fusion of Geo-data in Harmony with Design

By Nadia Amoroso


In the fields of landscape architecture and planning, leading practitioners are tying together the power of GIS to integrate geographic information right into the design process. Known as Geodesign, a term coined by Jack Dangermond, the CEO of ESRI Inc, this approach utilizes new technologies and web-based tools, enabling a design team to create quickly and effectively alternative designs, visualize the design impacts, and evaluate results all with the goal of providing effective, evidence based solutions.

O2 Planning + Design, a landscape architecture and urban design firm based in Calgary, Canada, embraces Geodesign as an integral part of its practice. In response to a request from the City of Calgary in 2008, O2 created a plan for the Nose Creek Watershed with the goal of mitigating the effect of urban development on water flow and quality, and minimizing damage to riparian ecosystems. The project is revisited in 2011 with the express purpose of employing the analytical capabilities of ArcGIS and CityEngine, Geodesign tools offered by Esri. Using both 2D and 3D modeling the designers are able to evaluate the success of the project to date, then create scenarios of future developments showing resulting impacts on the watershed.

Nose Creek Watershed (credit: O2 Design)

O2 was recently tasked with the planning and redesigning of High River, a town in Alberta whose commercial centre was destroyed by flooding in 2013. Along with analysis of water levels and elevations, serious questions will need to be raised as to the wisdom of rebuilding a town centre in what is essentially a floodplain. The 3D visualizations produced by Geodesign technologies should assist the population in making informed decisions, particularly as the immediate reaction after a disaster is to rebuild in the same location. O2 utilized a detailed set of landscape constraint evaluation models and urban development impact models in a seamless design, evaluation, and reporting workflow based in ESRI’s ArcMap GIS and CityEngine 3D modeling software; offering a more effective and quicker project outcome.
Ming-Chun Lee, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, School of Architecture, addressed the importance of Geodesign in urban design and architectural practice at the 2015 Esri Geodesign Summit. His design studio focused on Coastal Cities and the issue of “keeping the water out” or “moving the town”. Ming-Chun Lee, along with his colleagues in the Urban Design Studio, presented this challenge to his students and gave them the opportunity to design with GIS.

The selected site was Wilmington NC, a city bounded by river and ocean. The City’s website includes information such as “Is my property in a flood zone?” Given rising sea levels, the City is some major concerns which needs to be addressed. The UNC design students began with the premise of a 2m sea level rise over a period of 100 years. They examined and analyzed three levels of scale: Regional, Sub-Area and District.

At the Regional scale, these were the questions that the students tackled “What are the big issues in terms of land use and populations? Where will we lose land and infrastructure?”

At the Sub-Area scale, these questions were part of the project. “Where is vacant and underused land that will still be usable? Can we build infrastructure and increase population density in these places?”
The questions that arose at the District Scale, included, “What parts of downtown will be underwater? Can we use this water as an ecological and recreational resource?”

For this critical urban design project, GIS was used throughout all scales for the design process, to maintain the same level of information. Several design recommendations were made to the City from circulation and street patterns, transportation hubs and to overall future neighbourhood developments that addressed rising sea levels. See Ming-Chun Lee’spresentation at the 2015 Geodesign Summit for more information.Figure Ground map with Water edge protection (Credit: Ming-Chun Lee, UNCC)

Kongjian Yu of Turenscape Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urbanism has been advocating Geodesign for almost 20 years and has taken Geodesign to a national scale by influencing the planning and construction of new cities in China.

“Today’s Chinese cities and architectures are unsustainable: Our monumental architecture, wide roads, endless parking lots, huge city squares, flowered landscapes, and engineering-oriented municipal networks will eventually be seen as ghastly mistakes.”

Yu Kongjian continues to advocate the importance of Geodesign for smart design practice, which allows landscape architects and designers to understand and design intelligently to address many of the environmental issues of today and the future that are far too complex to be managed in traditional ways. “More than the technology of overlaying and GIS, Geodesign is a way of thinking when facing complicated spatial issues that need systematic and integrative solutions.

In 2006, Turenscape undertook the restoration of a seriously degraded site in Tianjin City, China. The 54-acre site was formerly a shooting range, but had become so degraded that residents insisted something must be done. The site was polluted, filled with garbage, prone to flooding and surrounded by slums.The original site was heavily polluted (Credit: Turenscape)

The original ecosystems included wetlands and marshes. After extensive analysis that included Geodesign, Turenscape created a series of cavities (depressions) to retain and detain storm water and aid in the regeneration of the site.

A series of cavities was designed to capture storm water (Credit: Turenscape)

As part of Yu’s design, a mixed palette of plant material was seeded to adapt to the various water levels of the site and would grow accordingly. Within two years the site was flourishing; water was filtered and purified, and garbage had given way to greenery. Given the opportunity, nature had quickly healed the site and a beautiful park was created for the community.

Source

Geodesign - a Fusion of Geo-data in Harmony with Design

By Nadia Amoroso



In the fields of landscape architecture and planning, leading practitioners are tying together the power of GIS to integrate geographic information right into the design process. Known as Geodesign, a term coined by Jack Dangermond, the CEO of ESRI Inc, this approach utilizes new technologies and web-based tools, enabling a design team to create quickly and effectively alternative designs, visualize the design impacts, and evaluate results all with the goal of providing effective, evidence based solutions.

O2 Planning + Design, a landscape architecture and urban design firm based in Calgary, Canada, embraces Geodesign as an integral part of its practice. In response to a request from the City of Calgary in 2008, O2 created a plan for the Nose Creek Watershed with the goal of mitigating the effect of urban development on water flow and quality, and minimizing damage to riparian ecosystems. The project is revisited in 2011 with the express purpose of employing the analytical capabilities of ArcGIS and CityEngine, Geodesign tools offered by Esri. Using both 2D and 3D modeling the designers are able to evaluate the success of the project to date, then create scenarios of future developments showing resulting impacts on the watershed.

Nose Creek Watershed (credit: O2 Design)

O2 was recently tasked with the planning and redesigning of High River, a town in Alberta whose commercial centre was destroyed by flooding in 2013. Along with analysis of water levels and elevations, serious questions will need to be raised as to the wisdom of rebuilding a town centre in what is essentially a floodplain. The 3D visualizations produced by Geodesign technologies should assist the population in making informed decisions, particularly as the immediate reaction after a disaster is to rebuild in the same location. O2 utilized a detailed set of landscape constraint evaluation models and urban development impact models in a seamless design, evaluation, and reporting workflow based in ESRI’s ArcMap GIS and CityEngine 3D modeling software; offering a more effective and quicker project outcome.
Ming-Chun Lee, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, School of Architecture, addressed the importance of Geodesign in urban design and architectural practice at the 2015 Esri Geodesign Summit. His design studio focused on Coastal Cities and the issue of “keeping the water out” or “moving the town”. Ming-Chun Lee, along with his colleagues in the Urban Design Studio, presented this challenge to his students and gave them the opportunity to design with GIS.

The selected site was Wilmington NC, a city bounded by river and ocean. The City’s website includes information such as “Is my property in a flood zone?” Given rising sea levels, the City is some major concerns which needs to be addressed. The UNC design students began with the premise of a 2m sea level rise over a period of 100 years. They examined and analyzed three levels of scale: Regional, Sub-Area and District.

At the Regional scale, these were the questions that the students tackled “What are the big issues in terms of land use and populations? Where will we lose land and infrastructure?”

At the Sub-Area scale, these questions were part of the project. “Where is vacant and underused land that will still be usable? Can we build infrastructure and increase population density in these places?”
The questions that arose at the District Scale, included, “What parts of downtown will be underwater? Can we use this water as an ecological and recreational resource?”

For this critical urban design project, GIS was used throughout all scales for the design process, to maintain the same level of information. Several design recommendations were made to the City from circulation and street patterns, transportation hubs and to overall future neighbourhood developments that addressed rising sea levels. See Ming-Chun Lee’s presentation at the 2015 Geodesign Summit for more information.

Figure Ground map with Water edge protection (Credit: Ming-Chun Lee, UNCC)

Kongjian Yu of Turenscape Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urbanism has been advocating Geodesign for almost 20 years and has taken Geodesign to a national scale by influencing theplanning and construction of new cities in China.

“Today’s Chinese cities and architectures are unsustainable: Our monumental architecture, wide roads, endless parking lots, huge city squares, flowered landscapes, and engineering-oriented municipal networks will eventually be seen as ghastly mistakes.”

Yu Kongjian continues to advocate the importance of Geodesign for smart design practice, which allows landscape architects and designers to understand and design intelligently to address many of the environmental issues of today and the future that are far too complex to be managed in traditional ways. “More than the technology of overlaying and GIS, Geodesign is a way of thinking when facing complicated spatial issues that need systematic and integrative solutions.

In 2006, Turenscape undertook the restoration of a seriously degraded site in Tianjin City, China. The 54-acre site was formerly a shooting range, but had become so degraded that residents insisted something must be done. The site was polluted, filled with garbage, prone to flooding and surrounded by slums.

The original site was heavily polluted (Credit: Turenscape)

The original ecosystems included wetlands and marshes. After extensive analysis that included Geodesign, Turenscape created a series of cavities (depressions) to retain and detain storm water and aid in the regeneration of the site.

A series of cavities was designed to capture storm water (Credit: Turenscape)

As part of Yu’s design, a mixed palette of plant material was seeded to adapt to the various water levels of the site and would grow accordingly. Within two years the site was flourishing; water was filtered and purified, and garbage had given way to greenery. Given the opportunity, nature had quickly healed the site and a beautiful park was created for the community.

Source