Beyond Data: Hybridizing Remote Sensing Technologies and Socio-cultural Nuances as Tools for Climate Adaptive Design

Climate transformations, such as rising temperatures, shifting precipitation patterns, and increasing extreme climatic events, are reshaping how landscapes function and are influenced by human activities. While the impacts of climate change are global, they manifest differently across places due to varying environmental and cultural contexts.  The advancements of geospatial sensing, methodologies, and data increasingly facilitate the monitoring of changes on Earth’s surface. Tools such as remote sensing and LiDAR are frequently used in design and policymaking today, but often without adequate attention to their limitations or the in situ socio-cultural contexts in which they are applied.  These tools, on which much of the design analysis and synthesis process is based, fall short of accounting for or melding site-specific social and environmental conditions. While offering precise mapping and predictive modeling capabilities, these tools risk oversimplifying the intricate relationship between humans and their environment. Understanding that design inherently has a socio-cultural foundation, a rigorous and site-specific method of translating data into design is needed.
 
The absence of adaptable design frameworks tailored to diverse challenges underscores the need for a paradigm shift in landscape architecture and urban design. Climate change impacts, shaped by specific cultural and environmental contexts, are experienced differently by individuals and communities, carrying varied meanings over time. While science-based geospatial technologies are essential for characterizing climate change effects, they cannot fully capture the nuances and contingencies that emerge when these changes intersect with human lives. Calibrating these methods to reflect such complexities is crucial for producing meaningful and effective design outcomes that address the needs of communities managing these changes.
 
The research aims to bridge the gap between environmental science, landscape/urban design, and socio-cultural needs through a holistic, climate-driven design approach. By reconciling technological precision with cultural nuance, the research seeks to foster climate-responsive and community-adaptive strategies for a sustainable future. To explore the integration of data and design, the research will experiment with multi-source data fusion and geospatial data analysis frameworks. Ground-truthing will play a critical role, combining site-based surveys with satellite-based Earth observation to validate findings. The ultimate goal is to address the issue of “scaling data” to characterize climate change impacts at scales relevant to design, expanding the scope of landscape practices to address climate transformation. By aligning advanced techniques with specific site conditions, this research aims to provide actionable insights for climate-adaptive design strategies.

Biography

Joyce Fong is a Ph.D. student in the Constructed Environments. Graduated recently from her Master of Landscape Architecture at UVA, she sees herself as a “landscape translator” who bridges communities with their environment through culturally specific and climate-adaptive design. Joyce is interested in research on leveraging geospatial technologies and data-driven design strategies to address climate challenges. Joyce has a Bachelor of Arts in Landscape Studies from the University of Hong Kong. With her passion for synthetic design and landscape research in the context of climate change, she seeks opportunities to explore, experiment, invent, and implement meaningful tools for landscape architecture practices.