RSA FG and Salzburg University sign service agreement for iSPACE-Studios for another three years
The Research Studios Austria Forschungsgesellschaft – in short: RSA FG – and the Paris Lodron University Salzburg – in short: PLUS – extend their partnership, which has already existed for 15 years, by another three years.
“This will further strengthen Salzburg as a location for research and science in its national and international pioneering role in innovations through data-driven geoinformatics”.
says RSA FG Managing Director Prof. Dr. Peter A. Bruck.
In Austria, an area of 26 soccer fields is newly built every day. The country’s energy consumption has increased by 27 percent in the past 20 years (figures from the performance agreement “Focus on Digitization – Intelligent Technologies” by RSA FG and PLUS, 2018). Geoinformaticians provide solutions as to how, in view of these developments, data-driven simulation systems can be used to contribute to (1) space savings, (2) traffic reduction and (3) energy efficiency. The application-oriented studio iSPACE of the RSA FG was founded 17 years ago in close cooperation with the current Department of Geoinformatics – Z_GIS of the University of Salzburg.
Intelligent settlement systems and digital twinning
The main focus of iSPACE today is: iSPACE – Smart Settlement Systems, headed by Thomas Prinz, is dedicated to intelligent settlement systems of the future. The Energy working group headed by Markus Biberacher is researching intelligent energy space planning for sustainable energy management. iSPACE – Smart 4D Environments develops innovations in Digital Twinning (digital images of the physical-real environment) and Assistive GIS (assistance geoinformatics systems) and is headed by Manfred Mittlböck.
A 20-person team is currently working on projects such as “Urban Green Belts” (a comparison of green belts in European cities), “THE4BEES” (an awareness project for energy saving through behavioral change) or “SaMBA” (researching ways to make active mobility more attractive).
New priorities on the research agenda
From 2019 to 2021 are on the research agenda, among others:
- Mobility Integrator: Development of intermodal accessibility models and GIS-based potential models for mobility nodes
- Spatial Energy Planning: Development of a HEATatlas for the analysis of the complex urban energy interrelationships and the identification of the potentials of renewable energy sources
- aWHEREness:lab: Supporting digital change with geoinformation
“The co-founding of the Research and Transfer Centre ‘Alpine Construction’ in cooperation with the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences in autumn 2018 and the ‘Salzburg Urban Mobility Laboratory’, which has also already been launched, will further strengthen Salzburg’s geoinformatics in the next three years.
Peter A. Bruck is optimistic.
