Interactive water-sensitive urban design for climate-adapted cities

The cities of the future rely on blue-green infrastructure: Climate-adapted communities use water-sensitive urban development and architecture, such as facade and roof greening, to intelligently deal with rain and urban flash floods. To do so, a project by the University of Copenhagen, Henning Larsen, and VRVis relies on a software framework that combines hydrological modeling and 3D visualization to accelerate design processes and decision support in heavy rain, flooding, and sponge city planning.

Visualization of an urban space with buildings, green areas and trees, also visible is rainwater runoff and seepage.

Visualization of soil infiltration of heavy rainfall at the University of Copenhagen campus.

A woman with MNS stands at a large screen and points to a spot on the flood risk map of Austria; a VRVis researcher also with MNS stands in the background and explains to her exactly what she can see on the screen.

With the help of viscloud, planning teams can interactively design and evaluate measures such as green roofs, seepage pits or various surface unsealing measures in real time.

Current urban planning takes into account not only rising temperatures but also falling water volumes - as many cities are challenged by heavy rains, flash floods and overflowing sewer systems due to the climate crisis and the accompanying meteorological changes. Nature-based solutions ("Nature-based solutions") for stormwater management in cities is therefore an important topic in urban climate change adaptation.

A tool for design and evaluation of water-sensitive urban development

This project sets the goal of designing a software toolbox for designing resilient and water-sensitive cities. In order to implement the interactive planning of sponge city measures in a digital tool, the University of Copenhagen relies on the hydrodynamic modeling expertise of VRVis as well as the worldwide unique flood simulator viscloud, which can be used to simulate and visualize floods and heavy rainfall. In the present project, a module for viscloud is being developed together with the planning office Henning Larsen, which specializes in sustainability, and VRVis, which, in addition to rain and flood simulation as well as sewer runoff, also models blue-green measures for climate-resilient cities. These include, for example, façade greening, roof greening, various surface structures such as asphalt or gravel, seepage pits, retention areas, dams, raised curbs or bioretention swales.

Interactive, data-driven planning with viscloud

With the help of this web-based software tool, architects and urban developers can design NBS solutions for urban spaces and simulate their benefits and added value in seconds - an important basis for decision support. Data-driven, interactive planning also facilitates interdisciplinary collaboration. Low-threshold communication is also a strength of viscloud, as the intuitively understandable 3D visualizations serve as an excellent basis for communication with and participation from the public.

VRVis develops an interactive viscloud model for the OOWV (Oldenburgisch-Ostfriesischer Wasserverband) for simulating and visualizing regionally differentiated heavy rainfall events for the entire OOWV area.

As part of the research project WiCiD, VRVis is developing an interactive viscloud web application for the city of Gothenburg on behalf of DHI Sweden.

A high-resolution base model of the entire federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate makes heavy rain and flood simulations accessible to different user groups.