Visualization of space appropriation in urban public parks

VISPA is part of the project Sustainable design, management and appropriation of urban public parks (Dr. Elisabeth Bühler PI) within the National Research Program 54 'Sustainable development of the built environment'.

Project description

Our main aims are to visualize spatio-temporal behavior and space usage in public parks and to create a tool for researchers and public authorities to analyze and explore the available data. Some preliminary results of a case study are mapped in Fig.1: locations of individuals (left), trajectories of individuals (center) and space usage of groups (right). More information on this case study can be found on a different website (only available in German).

Figure 1: Preliminary results

Besides the advancement of scientific knowledge, we expect our research results to provide public authorities, administrators and planners with decision making knowledge on the potential as well as the limits of landscape design and park management for a sustainable urban policy. To achieve this goal, the following activities have been carried out:

A scientific dissertation (PhD) by Frank Ostermann, accepted in October 2008 and successfully defended in January 2009
Publications in a range of international and national journals (see Publications)
Organisation of a one-day international workshop with practitioners and academic researchers in October 2008
Production of a final report including a CD ROM (currently in production)

In collaboration with the SOSPA-team, we have carried out the following research activities:

Controlled extensive field observations on the presence, activities and interactions of different user groups in the parks
Spatio-temporal visualization and analysis of observations
Document analyses (implementation plans, reports, etc.)

One example of recent exploratory visualizations is the following figure 2, showing the relative density of male (red) and female (green) park visitors.

Figure 2: Relative density of male/female distribution

More information on the current state of research as well as additional results can be found in the section on Publications

Team

Prof. Dr. Sabine Timpf

Dr. Frank Ostermann

maintained by F. Ostermann; last update March 25, 2009