Stochastic buildings generation to assist in the design of right to build plans

Abstract

The design of documents impacting potential new constructions, such as Right to Build plans, is a complex issue. New tools need to be proposed in order to systematically assess the impact of regulations on the building potential of the concerned areas. Furthermore, it is often not directly the morphology of new constructions that administrations and citizens would like to regulate but their properties with regard to other phenomena (solar energy potential, etc.). In order to tackle these issues, we propose in this article to explore building configurations and regulations using a stochastic building generator and a workflow engine. The workflow we propose for such an exploration will produce important amounts of data that we intend to release as OpenData in order for administrations, urban planners and citizens to be able to freely visualize and collectively choose the regulations that best suit their territory. Such amount of 3D geographical data also suggests new issues in geovisualization.