National Method for City Nature Mapping
A national method for the mapping of city nature and urban biodiversity.
Location
Denmark
Year
2023 — 2024
Role
Co-developer
Partners & Collaborators
ConTech Lab, Aarhus University, Aalborg University, Sted, Natur 360, WSP, Niras, Futurista, Habitats, COWI, Oiko, Rambøll, Det Blå, Rådet for Bæredygtigt Byggeri
Challenges
Typology
Services
SLA and ConTech Lab have initiated and developed a national Danish method for mapping city nature and urban biodiversity.
As a leading source of biodiversity loss globally, the construction industry is facing increasing demands to limit its impact on biodiversity decrease and to actively protect and enhance nature and ecosystems – both on-site and off-site.
To help massively improve the knowledge base for the design, management, and development of nature in our cities, SLA and ConTech Lab initiated the pioneer project to develop a national Danish method for mapping city nature and urban biodiversity.
The National Method for Mapping City Nature combines both quantitative and qualitative AI-based measurements to secure a holistic and interdisciplinary mapping result.
In the following, you can read more about two concrete projects built on top of the national method:
— Bynatur.app (“City Nature App”) – an app for mapping biodiversity
— UrbanBioScore – an industry-wide scoring system for biodiversity
“A joint method for biodiversity is imperative if we want to track the development of nature in our cities. With this work, we have created a national method to measure, compare, and evaluate city nature – for the good of people and planet.”
— Kristine Engemann Jensen, PhD and Biologist in SLA
The City Nature App
To make the method as widely and easily usable as possible, we have developed a ‘City Nature App’ that can be downloaded to all smartphones.
The City Nature App is a mobile tool that can easily be used during fieldwork while automatically digitizing the data. The app makes it easy to compare biodiversity across projects and to measure how biodiversity develops over time. Finally, the City Nature App has incorporated a series of AI-based standardized meassurements, which provide a quality assessment of the individual areas.
Since their launch in Spring 2023, the method and the City Nature App have been used on more than 750 public and private projects in all of Denmark.
The City Nature App is free and open to all and can be accessed here.
The app has been developed by SLA and ConTech Lab together with Aarhus Universitet, Aalborg Universitet, Sted, Oiko, Natur 360, WSP, Futurista, and Habitats.
“With Nature Positive by 2030, Biodiversity Net Gain, EU taxonomy, and the recent Nature Restoration Law, biodiversity has become critical to protect and promote for developers and investors. With this national method, we take a huge step in making this work strategic, operational, and documentable.”
— Mike Ameko Lippert, Strategy Director, SLA
UrbanBioScore
UrbanBioScore 1.0 is Denmark’s first industry-wide scoring system for estimating biodiversity in cities.
It quantifies biodiversity in a given area with a single number, based on biodiversity indicators recorded in the field by biologists or other specialists using either the Bynatur.app or a field survey form. This allows for insight into biodiversity in both existing urban areas and new developments – while enabling tracking of changes over time.
UrbanBioScore has been included in the ‘DGNB Certification 2025 for Renovations and New Constructions’.
SLA’s specialists in urban biodiversity monitoring have contributed to its development through their expert evaluations and collection of biodiversity data on the City Nature App.
Find the report behind UrbanBioScore and a guide for calculating the score here.
UrbanBioScore has been developed by ConTech Lab, Institute of Ecoscience at Aarhus Universitet, COWI, NIRAS, Oiko, Rambøll, SLA, SWECO, WSP, and Gentofte Kommune.
