rupd
TRANSCRIPT
RESILIENT URBAN PLANNING + DEVELOPMENT
CITY CHALLENGES
Cities around the world encounter the chal-lenges of urban heat island effects, climate change, pollution, energy demand and re-sponse. Therefore, a transition towards an urban climate change resilience needs ur-gent actions. This is important to improve the current situation considering several climate change impacts on people and built environ-ments.
PLANNING AND DESIGN
Based on the results of the research, inte-grated planning and design processes are performed as below:
• Identification of resilience options and ad-aptation strategies;
• Developing strategies related to architec-tural elements for the target area;
• Simulation and comparison of adaptation strategies in different scenarios;
• Consideration of mitigation strategies;
• Enhancing planning and policy making ap-proaches;
SERVICES
Our five key services are: Research, Plan-ning, Design and Implementation as well as Education.
RESEARCH
• Hazard identification RUPD has a distinctive expertise in studying Urban Heat Island effect that could impact health, air pollution, water shortages, energy demands and the use of space. Furthermore there are other impacts such as overshad-owing of buildings that need to be minimized especially in cold climates.
• Vulnerability analysisTopography, population dynamics, so-cio-economic condition and land use pat-terns are studied to understand the sensi-tivity of the city, infrastructure and different groups to the hazards.
AIMS
RUPD develops local action for global resil-ience and sustainable development. It helps upgrading urban design strategies and build-ings’ performance according to future cli-mate scenarios. RUPD integrates resilience, sustainability, biodiversity and low-carbon into urban planning and design process. It strives to accomplish projects with the best conditions for a resilient and long-lasting de-velopment. In order to achieve those goals effectively, a multi-scale approach is applied in regional, city, neighbourhood, building and community scales.
• Climate modeling and projectionRegional climatic models are used in order to research the changes in different weather parameters namely air temperature, precipi-tation, humidity and wind patterns.
EDUCATION
RUPD also offers education services, espe-cially with its university partners. In certain projects, RUPD works directly with universi-ties as the main platform.
IMPLEMENTATION
Based on the results of the previous stages, the implementation is performed as below:
• Preparation of action plansAction plans would be proposed in order to facilitate implementation processes. This process also integrates the ‘Urban Climate Change Resilience Strategies’ within the ur-ban development/planning framework.
• Implementation of action plans on a small scale (pilot projects)Pilot projects are carried out before imple-menting the action plans on large-scale.
• Recording the impacts of the pilot projects on climateAfter collecting the results of such pilot proj-ects, their impacts on the climate are ana-lyzed and compared. Then the action plans are updated and decisions are made accord-ingly.
• Implementation of the final action plans achieved through the above steps in three different scales i.e. short-, medium-, and long-term.
• Identifying the factors associated with the growth of local climate governance;
• Exploring the current situation of urban governance systems within the target city, and supporting the local authorities’ role in climate change policies;
• Modeling potential and challenges, illustrat-ing the preconditions and reform;
• Developing an enabling governance ap-proach towards upgrading local governance systems of the target city that could act as a key for fostering climate change protection.
This is to achieve not only climate change re-silience in the target city, but also to involve the students simultaneously into such R&D projects.
This procedure would involve the students in a multi-scale project and introduce how the tasks are performed in different phases.
In addition it makes the students ready for a wide range of future careers, namely those related to climate change, planning and de-sign. Implementing educational strategies at universities also helps developing resilient and sustainable urban environments.
This approach is vital to bridge the gap be-tween the environmental studies and the ac-tion plans.
TOOLS
“Providing the analysis of the solar and cli-matic response at a building skin level and urban environment can help combat local and global challenges.” In this respect one of the key analytical tools that RUPD applies in different project types is SOLARCHVISION.
• Design, evaluation and modification of dif-ferent alternatives for building elements in a variety of scales ranging from a neighbor-hood to a building;
• Optimization of shading or reflecting devic-es in different facades and climates;
• Studying the performance of multiple and single solar collectors;
• Integrated design approach; whereas it can effectively improve many aspects (e.g. energy production, energy demand, daylight, health, comfort and safety) for long periods of time.
FURTHER SERVICES
• Developing and analyzing the urban mor-phology and building skin response to the cli-mate conditions in different time cycles;
• Acting as a consultant for architectural and urban planning companies and helping to integrate a variety of effective solar-climatic considerations in design process;
• Data processing and visualization to help ar-chitects, urban planners and clients make ac-curate decisions concerning energy, health, and comfort measures;
• Improving the quality of both internal and external living conditions by means of a so-lar-climatic vision in an integrated design ap-proach;
• Simulating initial master plans and complex designs in collaboration with professional firms to find out the environmental potentials and impacts at different buildings and ur-ban areas, namely in relation to the sun and changing climates.
While significantly improving the performanc-es of spaces, an early integration of such ar-chitectural rearrangements in design process does not necessarily increase the construc-tion costs.
The SOLARCHVISION method can have im-portant applications in developing an inte-grated mitigation plan to adapt different exist-ing buildings and urban spaces with respect to current and future needs and challenges.
• Analysis of the current situation, forecast-ing future scenarios and the development of intelligent alternatives;
• Producing basic design guidelines based on solar-climatic data from different periods of time (i.e. hourly, daily, annual and decadal data);
This powerful platform for studying climate patterns, weather scenarios and solar effects, developed by Mojtaba Samimi, has been im-plemented in notable projects over the past decade.
