Our research focuses on two main areas: 

(1) Contemporary environmental planning has the unique opportunity to base its decision on large amounts of environmental data and on constantly improving and complex environmental models. However, it is not only a unique opportunity, but also one of the biggest challenges in environmental planning, to deal with the large amounts of data and complex models. It is one of the main goals of our research group to answer the question of how we can address these challenges and take the opportunity to make environmental planning more effective. We address this question in various areas of environmental planning, especially when it comes to better integrating land use change and its climatic impacts into environmental planning decisions.

(2) Digital decision-support tools are a promising way of dealing with the complexity of decision-making in environmental planning. For example, these tools can help us to identify sites that are most suitable for renewable energy facilities. We investigate which technical innovations can help to make digital tools more effective, particularly when there are many conflicting objectives. This includes the application and adaptation of multi-criteria decision analyses and multi-criteria optimization methods. We also want to better understand how participatory and interactive processes during the development and use of digital tools can help to improve their effectiveness.

In our courses, students learn how to use the following digital methods in environmental planning:

• Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
• Spatial suitability analyses
• Spatial modeling based on statistical methods and machine learning
• Multi-criteria decision analysis
• Spatial optimization

   

We practice these methods and their application based on numerous examples. These include the analysis of nature-based solutions (e.g. reducing heat in cities with the help of trees), the siting of renewable energy facilities and the modeling of land use changes.