FOS GIS to support regenerative design processes in urban areas

The paper presents a method and connected tools useful to support regenerative design activities in an urban area. In particular, the insights presented in this paper are part of a research funded by the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies of Politecnico di Milano, aimed at developing a game that can be used by students and local public administrations. The aim of the game is to develop improvement scenarios oriented towards local self-sustainability and functioning regeneration of local natural ecosystems. The proposed method is divided into the following steps: (1) Recognition of free data that can be processed through GIS and referred to the local urban context. (2) Mapping of energy, carbon and water flows, in particular: imported energy and material flows, energy and material flows available locally, energy and material flows exported from the local reference context. (3) Mapping of specific indicators able to support strategies consistent with the main goal functions of a natural ecosystem. This paper focuses on the potential use of Free and Open Source (FOS) GIS and open data in order to develop support maps for regenerative design processes.