Since July 2020, Yingwen Deng has been a junior researcher in the Research Studio iSPACE Smart Settlement Systems and is already optimizing land use in the Salzburg area using new data-driven spatial indicators as part of the Zentrum Alpines Bauen. The Center Alpine Building is a cooperation between the University of Applied Science Salzburg and the Studio iSPACE of the RSA FG and is financed by EFRE funds, funds of the province of Salzburg.
Web mapping or data visualization Traces are not foreign words for Yingwen Deng, on the contrary – they occupy her daily in her work. After her bachelor’s degree in Wuhan (China), Deng focused on research projects such as Virtual 3D Landscape Modeling or Tourists vs. Locals – Mapping Urban Traces from Social Media. This will be followed by a Master’s degree in Cartography at TU Munich, TU Vienna and TU Dresden in October 2019 on the topic: “Tourists vs. Locals: Mapping Urban Traces from Social Media”.
During her master’s degree, Yingwen focused on cartography, geospatial data management and geovisualization. Her goal, as she says, is to turn data into solutions for problems in daily life and thus trigger a positive development.
Since July 2020, the young researcher has now joined the iSPACE Smart Settlement Systems Research Studio in Salzburg as a junior researcher in the Alpine Building Center project.
Her web map enables the analysis of building land and housing demand within different data layers.
Within 4.5 months, Yingwen researched and created a first-of-its-kind interactive web map for analyzing future housing demand and housing land reserves and in the province of Salzburg.
This user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing web map visualizes the current development pattern in municipalities, projected annual housing demand based on population projections, and building land availability at the parcel level until 2043. The prototype map also provides a housing supply and demand simulation tool with customizable options.
The map thus assists planners as well as researchers and local officials in several ways. Undeveloped parcels for new housing can be identified and contrasted with projected housing demand, highlighting potential shortages over time. This can provide reference information for potential zoning plan adjustments and support a targeted densification plan for individual communities.
The integrated dashboard also enables the combination of building structures, housing potential, supply and demand. Its content updates as dynamically as possible according to user interactions. A time slider allows visualization of spatiotemporal trends in land use development in a map view. A community selector allows individual communities to be filtered in the map view and the data visualized for the target community. In addition, an editor has been integrated to allow direct customization of certain attributes, such as residential suitability or year of use for each parcel. On the municipality level, the desired building structure or the redensification factor can be adjusted.
The interactive functionality makes her map app unique and enables the documentation and analysis of different data at the same time. Yingwen about her first months within the RSA FG and her new web-map:
I started my career path in July 2020 as a junior researcher in the RSA FG. Working in the RSA FG’s Research Studio iSPACE as part of the Center for Alpine Construction allows me to work on topics such as web mapping and building data analysis in a professional research environment.
Working at the Alpine Building Center has allowed me to expand my knowledge and skills in web development and geospatial data processing and analysis. I was especially helped by being actively involved in the research process and discussions with other experts in our team, which allowed me to learn a lot from my colleagues. My goal is to create an innovative tool for sustainable settlement development with the web application I am developing.
My goal for the future is to continuously develop my skills in GIS and cartography and to promote sustainable spatial development with my application-oriented research and make it available to the general public as a member of the RSA FG.