Sasaki’s Carbon Conscience App: Assessing Carbon Impact Early and at Multiple Scales

• Tools and calculators

Interdisciplinary design firm Sasaki has introduced the Carbon Conscience App to help designers assess carbon-related impacts from the early stages of planning and encourage them to think holistically about carbon in their projects. Most standard carbon assessment tools available to designers are appropriate for projects already in advanced design stages. After reviewing several internal projects, Sasaki found that key decisions early in the master planning process have significant impacts on the embodied carbon of a project.

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PlanIt Impact: A Holistic Approach to Performance Modeling

• Tools and calculators

Architect Dominique Davison AIA, LEED AP, principal of DRAW Architecture + Urban Design, knows the value of landscape performance in achieving a sustainable, carbon-neutral built environment. That is why her collaborative performance assessment tool, PlanIT Impact, takes a holistic approach that models performance for both buildings and sites – unlike many of the building-centric modelling platforms available in today’s market.

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Vibrant Cities Lab: Urban Forestry Research and Resources

by Lauren Marshall, US Forest Service

• Landscape performance research
• Tools and calculators

Decades of research show that urban forests improve health and quality of life and deliver measurable economic benefits. Yet trees are often an afterthought because many decision makers aren’t aware of these multiple benefits. 

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A Digital Data Library for Wildlife Infrastructure

by Amanda Kronk, SWA Group

• Data and technology
• Tools and calculators

Wildlife infrastructure exists as a framework of migration courses and habitation patterns that are inextricably linked to critical human infrastructure. At any given time, there are countless “rivers of wildlife” migrating locally and regionally above and within the world we know. In conjunction with increasingly fragile climatic conditions, urban development is drastically disrupting this framework. Wildlife is essentially pushed to the urban periphery, as increasing habitat fragmentation results in detrimental conditions for species migration.

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