Sustainable urban development

Preconditions and challenges

Sustainable urban development means that the needs of people and businesses are met at the same time as it offers long term good living conditions for their citizens. This means that the sustainable city needs to have a “blue/green” infrastructure where both waterways and draining systems and green areas such as parks and other recreational areas are taken in to consideration.

Accessible and reliable geodata is the basis for the planning and creation of a “blue/green” infrastructure.

The ongoing densification of cities creates a precondition for sustainable solutions and makes it possible to manage the effects of climate change as well as it also creates challenges for planning and construction.

We need to understand how the city can adapt and change in the present time. At the same time, we need to be able to predict what future adjustments is needed to be done in cities in order to save resources and be more energy efficient.

Participation and democracy

Another challenge is participation and democracy. It must be made possible for both citizens and public and private actors to take part in the co-creating of better public areas in the cities. Therefor open and accessible geodata is needed - geodata that visualizes proposed changes with the help of digital tools and virtual reality. In order to plan and construct the sustainable city there is a need for accessible and usable geodata of high and well-known quality.

Geodata – a tool for an inclusive society

Living spaces, meeting points, green areas, access to services and possibilities to walk, cycle or travel by public transport and the interaction between the different functions of a city plays an important part for the individual’s conditions of life and choices.

The physical planning is a tool for creating the pre-conditions for a fair, inclusive and equal society. It also contributes to counteracting segregation.

Over time comparable geodata make a good base for decision-making.

The city – part of a bigger context

The city is one part in the jigsaw puzzle that is the region that the city belongs to. The cities also are nodes for transport, logistics and labor markets in growing regions. This poses new demands for cooperation and collaboration between authorities. Therefor it is important that public registers and data bases are quality assured, accurate and reliable so that they support decision making among other things.

The urbanization and globalization have changed the need for transports and logistics. Access to materials for construction and changing the cities are critical. The material must be produced and transported while minimizing the effects on the environment and without disturbing working- and living conditions.

The increased electrification of the transport sector and other functions in society demands a stable and robust supply of energy. The need for charging stations for electrical cars is one of many examples. With digitalization and automatization, the need for fast, safe and reliable positioning services increases.

A nationwide positioning service requires a robust and safe infrastructure, that can manage an increased load and more users.

A complex society needs cooperation

It is the local authority that plan and carry out the development in a city, often in cooperation with private actors and other authorities. The data produced and shared must be standardized and of well-known quality.

In planning and constructing a city the actors involved need to have common and efficient processes. This demands a long-term and independent cooperation. In order to achieve this the model for building information (BIM), models for information about physical environment and digital twins need to be joint tools in the process for building societies.

What we want to achieve within sustainable urban development:

• Digitalization and access to geodata are being used to strengthen the citizens perspectives and makes it possible for citizens to be involved and take part in the development of the city and its functions. All steps in the process, not only the ones decided, are available for citizens, entrepreneurs, associations etc.
  
  
• Geodata that are open, well parceled and with a described quality contributes to strengthen the collective knowledge, competence and capacity with in the area of city development.
  
  
• Geodata is the hub in the city’s ability to handle socially important functions in different critical situations such as natural disasters, pandemics, environmental disasters, big accidents and sabotages. For instance, it can concern areas like the supply of energy, local authorities’ responsibilities for water supplies, protection and safety, transportation.
  
  
• The actors that plan the city and its surrounding have access to usable geodata int the region where the city is positioned.

This is how we achieve the goals:

• An increased cooperation and open standards through shared objectives for general development projects in the society building process.
  
  
• Continuing the work with the digitalization of plans, for instance zoning plans, the planning of roads and general plans in order to get a more cohesive, efficient and transparent community planning. Traffic noise, pollution from industries and transports, circular management of building materials and ballast are examples of what need to be considered.
  
  
• Identifying the amount of data which are critical for a robust planning of society. This can include data about larger industrial areas, the management of surface water, especially sensitive and vulnerable buildings and infrastructure.
  
  
• Continued work with developing methods, models and databases related to geodata and that supports planning of a robust city environment. For instance, analysis for a safe city environment, robust infrastructure sustainable handling of materials and a circular economy.
  
  
• Developing open services to supply information for planning and construction in order to increase the digitalization and automatization of the societal building process.
  
  
• A developed local and regional cooperation in order to provide open and standardized geodata for the societal building process. This applies to both traditional GIS data as well as to new dynamic amounts of data from connected units (IoT).