Facilitating well-informed trade-off decision making on land use change: Integrating rules and indicators of ecosystem service provision into procedural 3D visualization

Collaborative planning processes between science and a variety of publicand private stakeholders are seen as prerequisite for more sustainable landscapeand urban development. New planning tools are required enabling the stakeholdersto make collaborative decisions under uncertainties taking into account multipledimensions and values, alternative development possibilities and performanceindicators. We present a generic modelling and 3D visualization framework forcommunicating relationships between the natural and built environment combiningthe approaches of multi-criteria decision analysis and procedural 3D visualization.Focussing on urban pattern’s potential for ecosystem services provision on parcellevel, we demonstrate the approach of integrating rules and indicators into theprocedural urban model implementing ESRI’s CityEngine system. Testing thepreliminary tool with selected stakeholders suggests that the generic proceduralsystem is suitable for interactive assessment of urban patterns and communicationof trade-offs. A set of core indicators should be identified and linked to the 3Dvisualizations in order to further reduce complexity.