For more detailed information please contact: chaowen.yao@aalto.fi
Supervised by Dr. Prof. Pia Fricker at Aalto university
2022 – Present
Carbon Capture Computation and Virtual Reality Representation of Point Cloud-Based Urban Trees in the Context of Climate Neutrality and Urban Digital Twin
Turning climate and environmental challenges into opportunities to transform our current urban typologies into active agents for sustainable futures, supports the European Union’s aims to make Europe climate neutral by 2050 (EU, 2020). Nowadays urban areas contribute to 71% of total carbon emissions (Rosenzweig, 2010). The effectiveness of urban green for climate mitigation has been discussed and confirmed (IPCC, 2018). Carbon sequestration (CS) through vegetation is currently the most efficient way to achieve urban decarbonization, while there is a great deal of exaggeration and uncertainty about the amount of carbon sequestration obtained by current urban landscape projects today (Lefebvre et al., 2021). Urban Digital Twin (UDT) establishes links with real cities or physical counterparts to improve the understanding of the complex phenomena of cities as well as the understanding and analysis of urban changes and operations (Nochta et al., 2020). For this reason, UDT is considered as enabling technology that promotes situational awareness of urban management and provides real-time urban information models. The emergence of UDT signifies the potential to address climate-related challenges through systematic urban planning. Towards urban climate mitigation, cities need to incorporate trees into digitalization processes. This is essential not only for the development of UDT but also for long-term environmental sustainability.
We are facing three major limitations in the advent of various emerging technologies in the urban domain: 1. The lack of research on carbon capture efficiency of urban green under different urban texture. 2. The information of carbon neutrality state in cities is not transparent/ invisible to the public. 3. The existing urban environment analysis workflows are based on diverse data input and platforms, which is creating major challenges in cross-platform coordination.
This research aims to develop a novel digital workflow generating a series of tools, based upon cutting-edge point cloud technology embedded into Urban Digital Twins, to simulate the efficiency of urban green for climate and environmental issues caused by climate changing mitigation. A major outcome of the research is the production of a new data layer, representing the urban green, to be embedded as an information layer for urban digital twins. The data layer will be visualized in virtual reality using Unreal Engine software, addressing the long-standing issue of the invisible of urban decarbonization efforts to the public. Furthermore, the generated information will be utilized to evaluate current urban planning and design from environmental perspectives, such as carbon sequestration of urban green and will allow for data-informed decision making for sustainable futures.
Figure 1. Proposed objectives and applications of research.
The expected outcomes provide stakeholders, politicians, planners and designers with an in-depth understanding of the current and possible future potential of urban green infrastructure on urban climate. The generated workflow and tools providing a digital tool for evaluating, monitoring and simulation for current and future planning strategies. The generated information will offer a data-informed basis for meaningful participatory processes, as well as for democratizing embedded knowledge of abstract data packages for the public.
Figure 2. The diagram displays the detailed steps using point cloud to compute carbon sequestration of trees and output as a virtual information model in urban digital twin.
YAO Chaowen 