STUDIES OF VOLUMETRIC RELATION BETWEEN VEGETATION AND BUILDINGS USING LIDAR DATA AND NDVI TO PROPOSE URBAN PARAMETERS

Abstract

The availability of high-resolution cartographic data is a trigger for the discussion about the quality of urban ambiance, as a result of comparison between indexes of vegetation cover and built area, aiming at the inclusion of new urban parameters in cities' management and planning. This paper aims not only to provide visualization about location and characterization of the vegetation cover but also to the evaluation of its role according to citizens' perception of their value. Pampulha's region, in Belo Horizonte, was adopted as a case study for its high-quality vegetation cover, which has been threatened by the expressive growth of the built-up area. The area is known been projected by Oscar Niemeyer, using as a value the equilibrium between natural and built landscape, what was recently recognized as cultural heritage by UNESCO. Belo Horizonte municipality has the privilege of having LiDAR data of 2007 and 2015, the last one also with high resolution infrared orthophotos. The methodology consisted in mapping the vegetation patches' projections from orthophotos and in calculating their volumes using LiDAR's points, as well as in calculating the buildings' volume using their footprints and heights also from LiDAR data, and comparing their volumetric indexes per block. As indexes classifcation must have references on local culture, in order to defne the scale of "suitability", a research was done interviewing people from the place, using homogeneous areas as spatial units. As the research deals with quantitative approach (volumetric indexes) and qualitative approach (perception of people from the place), it was also important to use an evaluation according to a technical approach, based on comparison of applied indexes from other zones of Belo Horizonte, to present a wider perspective about standards of the relation between building landscape and vegetation. The result is a contribution to support discussions about urban ambiance, based on volumetric values of vegetation and buildings, to be considered in urban parameters in Master Plans.