The Spatial Simulation Lab at TU Wien – Simlab for short – is an interdisciplinary research laboratory with a special focus on the combination of emerging visualisation tools and urban or spatial planning. It is part of the Faculty of Architecture and Planning and the Institute of Spatial Planning of TU Wien.
The research staff at the Simlab concentrate on research into visual analytics, visualization of spatial data using state-of-the-art graphic technologies, and the integration of the latter into urban planning and decision-making processes.
The lab is located on the premises of the Institute of Spatial Planning at the central urban campus of TU Wien, Karlsplatz. It is equipped with digital tools to support urban planning and decision-making. Virtual reality (VR) technologies allow multiscale, three dimensional stereoscopic, interactive real-time processing of spatial data.
Strategic overviews of spatial problems can be obtained, various scenarios and potential solutions tested, interventions and their effects investigated and spatial interactions identified. Interdisciplinary visualisations of spatial systems can thus be produced, enabling individual and above all team-based elaboration of holistic system overviews, which allow the examination of interrelated effects and causal relationships.
The facilities at the Simlab can therefore be used for a diverse range of research projects as well as for exploring new trends in design-based teaching and science in the context of spatial planning.
Research projects at the Simlab focus, among other topics, on strategic inward development of settlement systems and spatial energy planning, resilience of spatial structures and infrastructures, and the sustainable design of urban spaces.
A main objective of the Simlab is the enhancement of existing formal and informal planning instruments, always following the key principle:
Visualise to understand