Impact of Spatial Transitions on Subsurface

Organisation || Gemeente Enschede
Project Type || M.Sc. Thesis
Candidate || Frank Risseeuw

Dutch municipalities are facing several challenges that have large spatial impacts above and below ground. Think of building houses, upgrading the electricity grid, deploying alternative heating solutions, preparing for extreme rainfall, droughts and heat, facilitating a mobility transition, etc. There is a lack of understanding of how those distinctive challenges affect the physical space, let alone that decision-makers have a combined overview of all challenges. To aid those decision-makers, a tool has been developed to model those challenges spatially.

To scope the research, three challenges were chosen from which their effects above and below ground were modelled: electrification, heat transition and climate adaptation. Objects above ground were modelled as polygons. Below ground, the volumes of utilities were modelled as raster data representing a volume below a tile in units of m3/m2.

Heuristics-based generated indicating underground spatial impact of neighbourhood renovation plans (electricity distribution station (blue), climate adaptation measures (green), volume of underground utilities (yellow/orange)). .

Some preliminary results suggest that decision-makers find the tool useful in the early stages of (re)development processes to gain insight into their ‘own’, the ‘other’ and the ‘total’ assignment. However, further development in terms of more accurate modelling and integrating more decision-making factors such as social aspects and city functions is desired.