Natural Space Performance (system dynamics model)

A System Dynamics (SD) model aimed at identifying appropriate urban design and management strategies, while developing sustainable approaches to urban planning in Thamesmead (London, United Kingdom).

Project website

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/environmental-design/research-projects/2022/feb/community-water-management-liveable-london-camellia/ ❐

Details

Thamesmead is a neighbourhood in South-East London currently undergoing a large urban regeneration and development plan. This model mainly focuses on the Thamesmead Waterfront Development Plan, an urban development site that does not have any population yet but with plans to build more than 11,500 new homes during the next 20–30 years.

The SD model quantifies and assesses the impact of different urban development scenarios on natural capital and informs design evaluation. It provides a novel indicator, the Natural Space Performance (NSP), that is used to evaluate the capacity of natural space to provide ecosystem services in combination with urban infrastructure. The NSP indicator provides a semi-quantitative measure of system-wide impacts of change within a combined natural, built, and social systems.

The model consists of several sectors including the built and the natural areas, but also biodiversity and hydrological performance and infrastructural access standards.

The NSP model enables interested parties to test different environmental scenarios and design configurations, identifying pathways which address concerns while satisfying housing needs and helping make ecosystem services knowledge actionable. For instance, it compares very different urban design scenarios from high-density building to low-density building design, and it allows to integrate different nature-based solutions such as green roofs.

In summary, the NSP model is a tool to directly include and operationalise stakeholders’ priorities around NSP, addressing a gap in practice and research by temporally intgrating the social, built, and natural systems where key links and feedback are considered.

This work was co-funded by the CUSSH (Complex Urban Systems for Sustainability and Health) and by the Community Water Management for a Liveable London (CAMELLIA) projects.

Keywords:

Natural space performance; Ecosystem services; Natural capital; System Dynamics; Simulation; Thamesmead

Links:

• O'Keeffe J. O'Keeffe, J., Pluchinotta, I., De Stercke, S., Hinson, C., Puchol-Salort, P., Mijic, A., Zimmermann, N., Collins, A. M. (2022), ‘Evaluating natural capital performance of urban development through System Dynamics: A case study from London’, Science of The Total Environment, 824, 153673 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.153673 ❐