Hanover starts AI project for sustainable urban greening!

Hanover starts AI project for sustainable urban greening!

A new chapter in sustainable urban greening is beginning in Hanover! With the BlueGreenCity-KI project, artificial intelligence (AI) will be used in the future for the intelligent care and irrigation of city trees. The aim of the initiative is to develop methods for planning and automated forecasts for individual irrigation needs. This project is in the context of the growing challenges posed to urban green spaces by climate change. The importance of green spaces for climate protection and air quality is coming to the fore, especially in large cities.

Initiated on July 16, 2025, the project will be funded with almost 1.9 million euros from the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection until the end of November 2027. In addition to the state capital of Hanover, project partners include Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences and several institutions that have expertise in landscape architecture and water management. The coordination of the project is in the hands of Prof. Dr. Antje Backhaus and Manuel Wesemann, who work from the Institute for Landscape Architecture at Leibniz University Hannover. This concentrated specialist knowledge enables an interdisciplinary approach to the challenges that urban green space management brings, as Archland reports.

The goal: sustainable urban development

The core task of the project is to prioritize green maintenance measures in a targeted manner. This includes, among other things, the development of an AI tool that analyzes sensor data, urban climate maps and care registers. This technology should make it possible to identify new locations for urban trees and generate recommendations for their care and irrigation. The use of alternative water sources, such as rainwater or treated wastewater, also plays a central role. This could not only significantly reduce drinking water consumption, but also increase CO₂ storage capacity and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to Kommune 21.

An innovative digital twin of water storage infrastructure is also being developed to enable automated prediction of irrigation volumes. This digital technology is potentially not only available in Hanover. The solutions should also be applied to other cities and their green space management. This provides a breath of fresh air in urban development and could serve as a model for other urban green space projects in Germany.

The need for AI in urban development

But what exactly is the use of AI in urban development? So far, the use of such technologies in this area has been limited and there is still a lot of research to be done, according to the BBSR. The need to update and intelligently link large amounts of data is becoming increasingly urgent. With appropriate digital infrastructures, AI methods could quickly enable more efficient analyzes and thus improve the quality of life in urban areas. Projects like BlueGreenCity-KI show that the path to innovative urban greening has already been taken.

It will be exciting to see how things develop in the coming months. The initiatives are promising and could set new standards for the integration of artificial intelligence into urban landscape management. Everyone who is involved in this future-oriented project has a good hand!