GLOBAL CITY FOREST – Digital Planning Tool

Imagine a world with thriving, connected, and biodiverse city forests!

This is the vision of the GLOBAL CITY FOREST (GCF) project. The GCF is a long-term project aiming to increase current and future urban forests in cities to contribute to global temperature reduction, improved stormwater management, improved air quality, biodiversity support, and social resilience, ultimately shaping a greener, cooler, and more equitable future.

The project outcome is a digital planning tool, that aids cities in planning, monitoring, and expanding the urban tree canopy at the city and regional scales. Informed by a robust Needs and Gaps Assessment conducted in 2024, the proposed digital planning tool will be open-source and remote sensing-based, designed to be a versatile and dynamic resource with multiple functionalities as follows:

• Document and monitor existing urban tree cover.
• Identify future opportunities to expand urban tree canopies.
• Measurement and valuation of ecosystem services
• Integration of spatial urban planning data layers
• Offer scenario-building based on climate change data to estimate future urban tree canopy needs and limitations.

Project Outputs:

1. Developing and Validating the Digital Tool:

Developing and deploying a scalable, open-access digital planning tool that enables cities to strategically integrate urban forests into climate adaptation strategies, enhancing resilience, reducing urban heat islands, and improving ecosystem service delivery through data-driven, ecosystem-based approaches.

2. Stakeholder Engagement and Capacity Building:

Conducting training workshops and hands-on events to stakeholders, including city officials and planners, to ensure users can interpret data outputs and apply them in real-world planning contexts.

3. Institutional Coordination and Integration:

Engaging city departments and global urban networks (e.g., ICLEI, C40, UN-Habitat) to co-develop pathways for tool adoption and foster policy alignment.

Project Status:

• Updated the benchmarking exercise of existing tools, looking at similar forestry planning digital tools. The exercise has also examined key functionalities in existing tools, as well as the data layers, methods, and use of AI.
• Conducted a literature review of existing conceptual planning frameworks for urban forestry, to better understand the urban forest planning process. The exercise resulted in a planning framework developed by consolidating key components from 6 selected frameworks. The consolidated framework will act as a conceptual baseline for the GCF-DPT.
• Based on the existing tools and literature, the original list of functionalities for the GCF-DPT from the Needs and Gaps assessment was refined, by mapping the planning steps from the literature review with the functionalities and data layers from the updated existing digital tools exercise.