Landscape design in infrastructure projects - is it an extravagance? A cost-benefit investigation of practices in dams

R. Ioannidis, G.-F. Sargentis, and D. Koutsoyiannis, Landscape design in infrastructure projects - is it an extravagance? A cost-benefit investigation of practices in dams, Landscape Research, doi:10.1080/01426397.2022.2039109, 2022.

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[English]

Landscape design of major civil infrastructure works has often been undermined as a policy requirement or been neglected in practice. We investigate whether this is justified by technical challenges, high costs or proven lack of utility of landscape design of infrastructure, focussing on dam-design practice. Initially, we investigate global practice and identify 56 cases of dams in which landscape or architectural treatment has been applied. We then create a typology of utilised design techniques and investigate their contribution to improving landscape quality perception through literature review and through the analysis of photograph upload densities in geotagged photography databases. Finally, we investigate costs of landscape works, analysing three dam projects in detail. The results demonstrate that landscape design of civil infrastructure (a) improves landscape quality perception of infrastructures’ landscapes and (b) that its implementation can be both economically and technically feasible, especially if existing knowledge from best practices is utilised.

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Our works referenced by this work:

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9. G.-F. Sargentis, R. Ioannidis, G. Karakatsanis, S. Sigourou, N. D. Lagaros, and D. Koutsoyiannis, The development of the Athens water supply system and inferences for optimizing the scale of water infrastructures, Sustainability, 11 (9), 2657, doi:10.3390/su11092657, 2019.
10. G.-F. Sargentis, P. Dimitriadis, R. Ioannidis, T. Iliopoulou, and D. Koutsoyiannis, Stochastic evaluation of landscapes transformed by renewable energy installations and civil works, Energies, 12 (4), 2817, doi:10.3390/en12142817, 2019.
11. G.-F. Sargentis, P. Dimitriadis, R. Ioannidis, T. Iliopoulou, E. Frangedaki, and D. Koutsoyiannis, Optimal utilization of water resources for local communities in mainland Greece (case study of Karyes, Peloponnese), Procedia Manufacturing, 44, 253–260, doi:10.1016/j.promfg.2020.02.229, 2020.
12. R. Ioannidis, and D. Koutsoyiannis, A review of land use, visibility and public perception of renewable energy in the context of landscape impact, Applied Energy, 276, 115367, doi:10.1016/j.apenergy.2020.115367, 2020.
13. N. Mamassis, A. Efstratiadis, P. Dimitriadis, T. Iliopoulou, R. Ioannidis, and D. Koutsoyiannis, Water and Energy, Handbook of Water Resources Management: Discourses, Concepts and Examples, edited by J.J. Bogardi, T. Tingsanchali, K.D.W. Nandalal, J. Gupta, L. Salamé, R.R.P. van Nooijen, A.G. Kolechkina, N. Kumar, and A. Bhaduri, Chapter 20, 617–655, doi:10.1007/978-3-030-60147-8_20, Springer Nature, Switzerland, 2021.
14. G.-F. Sargentis, R. Ioannidis, T. Iliopoulou, P. Dimitriadis, and D. Koutsoyiannis, Landscape planning of infrastructure through focus points’ clustering analysis. Case study: Plastiras artificial lake (Greece), Infrastructures, 6 (1), 12, doi:10.3390/infrastructures6010012, 2021.

Our works that reference this work:

1. R. Ioannidis, N. Mamassis, A. Efstratiadis, and D. Koutsoyiannis, Reversing visibility analysis: Towards an accelerated a priori assessment of landscape impacts of renewable energy projects, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 161, 112389, doi:10.1016/j.rser.2022.112389, 2022.
2. G.-F. Sargentis, R. Ioannidis, I. Bairaktaris, E. Frangedaki, P. Dimitriadis, T. Iliopoulou, D. Koutsoyiannis, and N. D. Lagaros, Wildfires vs. sustainable forest partitioning, Conservation, 2 (1), 195–218, doi:10.3390/conservation2010013, 2022.
3. G.-F. Sargentis, and D. Koutsoyiannis, The function of money in water–energy–food and land nexus, Land, 12 (3), 669, doi:10.3390/land12030669, 2023.