Colouring Dresden

The citizen science project with the long title “Building culture and climate-friendly architecture in Dresden. Mapping, researching and communicating building knowledge” aims to collect information on Dresden’s buildings in an open digital platform together with the population and thus make it visible and usable in maps. Together with the citizens, research questions have already been found and prioritized. In addition to general basic characteristics (building age, building structure, materiality, use, …), the focus should be on the resilience of buildings with regard to flood/heavy rain events or heat stress. Taking into account the requirements of historic preservation, among other things, the potential for structural climate adaptation measures can be shown. For these topics in the context of buildings, an appropriate building typology as well as suitable building characteristics and their recording methods will be defined. By building a digital platform that brings together this knowledge on buildings, opportunities for future development can be reflected, visualized, discussed and evaluated. The interactive thematic maps of the platform visualize the state of registration: the more colourful the map, the more building features have already been registered. The project includes a number of different activities and formats for participation. Together with the partners, actions are planned to convey knowledge about buildings and their recognition in the city (city walks, lecture series at the ZfBK, digital monthly regulars’ table, mapathons, school actions at DLR_School_Lab, etc.). The exchange of experience and networking with regard to technical implementation takes place through regular meetings or hackathons. A sustainable digital infrastructure ensures the open provision of project-related documents (the source code of the platform, workshop documentation, the collected data, etc.). Thus, the project aims to create suitable framework conditions to enable Citizen Science in Dresden in a sustainable way. The project is internationally embedded in the research network Colouring Cities Research Programme (CCRP).