Optimising the green infrastructure in Belfast: An integrated assessment framework for urban green infrastructure planning

Abstract

In light of the climate crisis and rapid global urbanisation processes, modern cities are facing pressing challenges including the increasing occurrences of extreme weather events and the deteriorated environments, which pose threats to the quality of urban living environments (Tonne et al., 2021; Andersson-Skold et al., 2015). Therefore, an increasing number of research projects and governmental policies have promoted the establishment of Green Infrastructure (GI) as a nature-based solution for enhancing both biodiversity and global living environments. However, an integrated evaluation framework underpinned by spatial and socio-ecological evidence has not been fully established. This research aims to explore and investigate the different GI components with relevant spatial assessment methods to explore the potentials for geospatial data to optimise the GI planning framework.

Seeking to build a comprehensive planning framework that takes different green infrastructure elements into account, this research defines three main development components of GI: the quality of public greenspace, its accessibility, and community greenery. In order to identify important features of public greenspaces and user preferences, a questionnaire was conducted to derive insights into the relationship of preferred urban greenspaces in Belfast City. Important factors influencing experiences in public greenspaces are specified and integrated with landscape assessment metrics to develop a quality index, which can help differentiate the social and ecological values of public greenspaces.

Moreover, apart from the quality of greenspaces, accessibility appears to be one of the assessment of network connectivity ought to consider both proximity and quality greenspace provision. The result identifies underserved areas and further explores the potential problems related to greenspace connections. On the other hand, community greenery is assessed by exploring positive effects of multi-scale green resources on mitigating environmental hazards. It helps to identify how different green elements enhance the quality of community living environments. The results provide discussions, which link GI provision, Belfast City Council’s resilience strategy, and the socioeconomic status of communities.
These evaluation methods create the potential for a locally-based and quantifiable GI strategy to optimise and maximise the multi-functionality of GI across cities. Built upon the analysis and evaluation of different GI components, this research proposes an integrated planning framework with specific strategies regarding to different types of GI development and devises recommendations for future GI planning.

Date of Award	Dec 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Queen's University Belfast
Supervisor	Neil Galway (Supervisor) & William Megarry (Supervisor)