Comparing spatial scenarios with insight into the data, models, and assumptions behind the results
Healthy area development
How do you combine housing development with sufficient greenery, accessible amenities, water storage, and a healthy living environment? And how do you make it transparent what changes when a spatial design or program is adjusted?
In area development, municipalities and engineering firms investigate these questions from multiple disciplines. The Tygron Platform provides a shared digital environment where professionals can bring together existing plans, GIS data, and calculation models, investigate impacts, and compare alternatives.
This creates a shared analytical basis for substantiating spatial choices.
Different disciplines, one analytical basis
Urban planners, hydrologists, ecologists, mobility experts, and amenities advisors often work with their own data, models, and research methods. With Tygron, they can use this information in conjunction.
Professionals can import existing spatial plans, apply available calculation models and indicators, and, where necessary, add their own data, models, and workflows.
For example, the same housing development scenario can be evaluated for flooding, heat stress, greenery, land use, and the accessibility of daily amenities. The specialists involved assess the results based on their own expertise.
Technical in-depth details
Indicators for assessing plans
API and integrations with other systems
Investigate, compare, and improve
Area development is an iterative process. An initial design shows where housing, infrastructure, and amenities are planned. The analysis of such a design can then lead to adjustments in the program, layout, or phasing.
Suppose a municipality is investigating multiple variants for a new residential area. In addition to the number of homes, the project team wants to know whether future residents will have sufficient access to daily amenities. Therefore, for each variant, it is investigated how many homes are located within a selected walking or cycling distance of, for example, a supermarket, sports facility, public transport stop, general practitioner, or pharmacy.
In doing so, one does not only look at a circular radius around an amenity. With the Travel Distance Overlay, accessibility can be evaluated via the available pedestrian, cycling, or road network. After all, a barrier, missing link, or unfavorable location can mean that an amenity is close as the crow flies, but less accessible in practice.
The outcomes can be translated into concrete values using indicators, such as the percentage of homes located within the agreed distance from a supermarket, sports facility, public transport stop, or healthcare facility. By using the same data, distances, and baseline assumptions for all variants, the differences become traceable and consistently visible.
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Design variant
Bring housing, routes, and existing amenities together in a single spatial model. This forms the basis for exploring different development scenarios.
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Analyze accessibility
Investigate which homes have access to supermarkets, sports facilities, public transport, and healthcare via the available pedestrian, cycle, and road networks.
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Identify bottlenecks
Make visible where accessibility, distribution, or network connectivity fall short of the goals for the area.
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Improve variant
Investigate the effect of an alternative location for an amenity, an additional connection, or an adjusted phasing of housing construction.
5
Compare alternatives
Re-evaluate the adapted variants using the same indicators and assumptions, ensuring differences are consistently and traceably visible.
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By using the same data, indicators, and assumptions for every variant, a transparent process is created in which design, analysis, and improvement reinforce each other.
For example, the analysis may reveal that while the initial homes are delivered, a portion of them still lacks adequate access to sports, daily groceries, public transport, or primary healthcare. The project team can then explore the impact of an alternative location for an amenity, a better walking or cycling connection, an additional public transport stop, or an adjusted development phasing.
The models and indicators provide insight into the spatial consequences of such a change. The involved professionals determine which distances, amenities, capacities, and policy objectives are relevant and which spatial trade-off is appropriate.
Transparent, traceable, and verifiable
In complex area development, it is not just the result of a calculation that matters. It must also be clear how that result was achieved.
Transparency
Insight into the data, models, parameters, and indicators used.
Traceability
Results can be traced back to the relevant input data, assumptions, and model settings.
Verifiability
Professionals can assess assumptions, adjust them, and re-run analyses.
This also requires meticulous project setup, documentation, and validation. The Tygron Platform supports working with explicit data and models, enabling specialists to review the underlying reasoning.
An example is the technical documentation of the Water Module, which describes the calculation methods and underlying theory.
Technical in-depth details
Water Module: theory and calculation formulas
A shared foundation for collaboration and decision-making
In area development, research results must not only be technically sound, but also understandable for project teams, clients, and decision-makers.
With Tygron, different disciplines can work from the same spatial information. Results can be presented in maps, 2D and 3D visualizations, and indicators, while the underlying analysis remains accessible to specialists.
This supports comparing alternatives, recording assumptions, and substantiating choices. Moreover, data, models, and indicators can be reused in subsequent design variants or other projects.
The final spatial trade-off and decision-making remain with the responsible professionals and organizations.
Tygron in practice
Deventer: managing urban growth
Deventer is investigating how the city can accommodate new housing while prioritizing greenery, liveability, and mobility. Using Tygron, various development scenarios and their spatial impacts were explored.
Nieuwegein: assessing housing development comprehensively
Together with SITE-UD, Nieuwegein used a digital city model to investigate the impacts of housing development plans. This included examining amenities, heat stress, and greenery, among other aspects. The results helped substantiate conditions for further growth.
Vallei en Veluwe: weighing water interests
Waterschap Vallei en Veluwe uses Tygron to investigate water-related impacts of spatial developments. This enables water expertise to be integrated at an early stage when evaluating plans and measures.
How does this work in practice?
Can existing designs and proprietary GIS data be used?
How are different scenarios compared?
Does Tygron determine how many amenities are needed?
From research to substantiated spatial decisions
Integrated research, design, and computation require interdisciplinary collaboration as well as insight into how results are substantiated.
The Tygron Platform provides professionals with an environment to combine existing data and plans, compute impacts, compare scenarios, and reuse analyses.
This enables municipalities, engineering consultancies, and consortia to substantiate spatial choices using a shared, transparent, and verifiable analytical basis.
Want to learn more? Discover the Tygron Platform
Technical documentation: Tygron Support Wiki
Technical in-depth details
Travel features for different modes of transport
Indicators for translating analyses into performance metrics
