Integrated Design for Resilient Urban Landscapes
Can digital technologies help us to conserve, design and retrofit our urban landscapes to regenerate and maintain healthy cities and urban ecological processes?
This panel event will cover the challenges in bridging across disciplines to target the application of digital technology to address critical ecological and urban design issues.
We face several challenges in understanding how ecosystems are impacted by urbanisation.
There is a need for critical research and monitoring to be embedded into the design process – feeding back into a digital twin representation for predictive methods of maintenance and management.
This panel will discuss:
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Challenges of scale
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Lack of relevant information
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Risks of decisions being made with incomplete data
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Fit-for-purpose data
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Integration of tools
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Designed experiments
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Digital environments as a robust communication tool that can align interests
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Meet the panelists
Tiffany Crawford
Co-Director, Climate Change and City Resilience, City of Melbourne
Tiffany Crawford is Co-Director of City of Melbourne’s Climate Change and City Resilience Branch, which focuses on achieving a resilient, well adapted and zero emissions city. Tiffany’s team of experts advise and advocate on climate policy, guiding the community in its transition to a resilient, zero carbon and adapted future aligned with the Paris Climate Agreement as well as the Sustainable Development Goals.
Tiffany worked as Legal Counsel for the City for over 10 years, and has degrees in Law, Arts and an Executive Masters in Public Administration and has worked passionately on many of the City’s leading innovation and sustainability initiatives such as Environmental Upgrade Finance, the Melbourne Renewable Energy Project, the Urban Nature Strategy, and green infrastructure policy.
James Barrow
Digital Mixed Reality and Digital Engineering Solutions Lead, GHD
As an experienced built environment professional and leader, specialising in digital – supporting planning, design, delivery, and communication - of major infrastructure and city shaping projects, James brings a strategic and innovative, yet practical approach to project development, client engagement and delivery frameworks. James has a strong respect and appreciation for the broad range of disciplines that contribute to the successful planning outcomes and the development and delivery of major infrastructure projects.
With a keen focus on user centric philosophies, he focusses closely on collaborating with project stakeholders and building teams with a strong understanding of project challenges, impacts, contributors, stakeholders and associated program activities, to inform the digital solutions required to help deliver a successful project outcome. James has a proven delivery track record and has worked closely across the broader Victorian project landscape, understanding the critical fabric between people, place and environment.
Dr Nano Langenheim
Lecturer In Landscape Architecture & Urban Design, Architecture, Building and Planning, University of Melbourne
Dr Nano Langenheim is a landscape architect, horticulturist and arborist who specialises in the use of procedural modelling and geo-spatial data visualisation techniques, to support multidisciplinary design decision making for cities in transition. Nano brings 20 years of design practice experience and knowledge to her current research and teaching role.
She combines a rare blend of practical, technical and theoretical knowledge to her research by design, about design and for design. Her research by-design includes, coordinating the construction of a diverse range of award winning multi-scaled landscape projects in both the private and public realm. Her research about design includes historic landscape research of tree-scapes in cities, examining the evolution of street tree-scape design decisions and the shifts in their decision drivers from initially visual concerns to todays’ environmental imperatives. She has also conducted extensive study into the evolution of algorithmic botany technology beginning with the development of L-systems through to the advanced recursive branching, procedural tree modelling and space colonisation algorithms. Her research for design focuses on “actionable research” for evidence-based design. She investigates leading-edge developments in computational landscape and urban design modelling (using geospatial data, computational ecology, species distribution modelling and hydrological catchment delineation), coupled with multi-criteria decision support systems (using environmental modelling, topographic modelling and rapid prototyping).
Dr Soheil Sabri
Senior Research Fellow In Urban Analytics, Infrastructure Engineering, University of Melbourne
Dr Soheil Sabri is a Senior Research Fellow in Urban Analytics at the Centre for Spatial Data Infrastructures and Land Administration at the University of Melbourne. He leads research and developments about digital modernisation of urban planning and design.
He managed and delivered several research and development projects including Fishermans Bend Digital Twin, a collaborative project with Victorian Government, Department of Environment, Land, Water, and Planning (DELWP) as well as Spatially Enabled Platform to Support Liveability Planning for Singapore Government (Urban Redevelopment Authority). His research, practice, and teaching interests are about developing Urban Digital Twins, Multi-dimensional (3D/4D) Planning Support Systems and analytical tools enabling planners and decision makers for evidence-based and data driven future developments. Specifically, he leads the research and development of Planning Applications in Urban Digital Twins including Development Envelope Control, Rule-Based Compliance Assessment, and Ecologically Sustainable Design (ESD) for smart and sustainable urban planning and design. He is co-chair of Academia, University, and Research Working Group in Digital Twin Consortium and a member of PlanTech National Working Group in Planning Institute of Australia (PIA). Prior to this, he was a senior lecturer in the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), where he delivered several consultancy and research projects about urban gentrification, affordable housing, transportation planning, and the impact of built environment on public health and welfare. Soheil earned his Master in Urban Planning in 2004 and PhD in Urban & Regional Planning, with focus on Geosimultaion, in 2012. He has an extensive and hands on experience in consultancy, research and teaching about technological innovation and digital modernisation in urban planning and design, particularly planning support systems, Geosimulation, GeoDesign, spatial statistics, analysis and modelling.
Mark Allan (Chair)
Director Greenline, City of Melbourne
Mark Allan is a registered architect and qualified urban planner with a Master’s degree from the Melbourne Business School. With a career spanning 30 years in sustainable urban development and major urban renewal projects, Mark has played key roles in the planning and design of Federation Square, Melbourne Docklands and the Queen Victoria Market Precinct Renewal. In his current role at the City of Melbourne he is Acting Director City Design where he leads Council’s City Design Studio. Mark has previously held senior roles in architectural practice and at Mirvac, VicUrban and the former Melbourne Docklands Authority. He is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Architects and the Planning Institute of Australia and an Honorary Fellow of the University of Melbourne’s Infrastructure Engineering Department. Mark has expertise in urban renewal projects and the design of sustainable precincts.
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