Hello! This is the user manual of TOSCA.

The TOSCA (Toolkit for Open and Sustainable City Planning and Analysis) has been developed in cooperation between the Digital City Science of the HafenCity University Hamburg (HCU) and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ) and piloted in India, Ecuador and Palestine with local partners. Further partners are the municipal administrations, local tech companies, and universities across the different locations. It is an open-source tool and the software for this project is based entirely on open-source components.

The Toolkit for Open and Sustainable City Planning and Analysis is a web-based geographic information system (GIS) for multi-touch tables that is optimized for the use by non-GIS experts. It supports integrated and participatory urban planning processes, fostering dialogue between governments and citizens and exchange of knowledge and data between government departments. ​ The main functionality of the Toolkit for Open and Sustainable City Planning and Analysis is to visualize and analyze complex urban data, jointly among local practitioners and with citizens. ​

The tool is intended to help cities in urban planning processes such as Master Planning, citizen participation and urban flooding. The project is unique as it provides easy-to-use technology that enables urban stakeholders to make decisions in a highly participative manner with spatial data and develop the tool incrementally in the future, due to the open-source nature of the tool.

This section describes the tool interface in detail and explains the components of the tool.

The tool has a simple interface as shown in the image below. Each button and feature is explained below. In general, you will find that the work-flow within the tool optimises layer management by (1) managing and viewing your layers on the left panel (2) editing, analysing your layers on the right panel. You will be introduced to five buttons, namely (i) Datastore - for viewing all your layers uploaded into the tool (ii) Citizen participation tool (iii) Drawing tool (iv) Layers list - to view/edit/analyse all the added layers to the map (v) Buffer tool - to draw buffer areas.

1. Datastore: This button opens up the section on the left panel and stores all the uploaded layers in the tool. This data has to be uploaded through the Geoserver, for more information, you can check this page. You can define this panel based on your need, and group data lyers based on themes. Example: The 'Transporation' section in the Datastore can have only layers related to the transportation theme such as primary roads, secondary roads, footpaths, etc.

2. Layers: The button opens up the right panel, where you can see only the layers you have added to the map. This helps you work only with what you need, without the need to scroll endlessly. In this panel, you can change the colours of the layers, change opacity and run queries on the data, such as attribute filtering and geometry filtering.

3. Drawing tool: This tool helps you to draw on the map. You can use this to draw your area of interest on the map. It is also a very useful discussion tool, you can draw lines, points and polygons while speaking in a presentation. In addition, you can add your drawings to the map as a temporary layer, that will show up on the right panel.

4. Zoom tool: You can use the '+' and '-' buttons to zoom in and out of the map. If you are using the touch-table, using your fingers to zoom will give a better user experience.

5. Citizen participation: This button takes you to the citizen participation portal of the tool. Here, you can view all the added participation campaigns that you have created. For more information on how to create a campaign, please check this page.

6. Buffer tool: This button helps you to create buffers from lines, points and polygons. You can also save the buffer created as a temporary layer that will show up o the right panel.

Top to bottom: ​​Figure 1 : Overview of the user interface, Figure 2 : Datastore and Layers, Figure 3 : Process of adding a layer to the map

• By clicking on 1. Datastore and 2. Layers, the pop-up panel will show up as shown in Figure: 2. To hide them back click on “<<” and “>>” buttons on respective panels.
• By clicking on any of the listed options in Datastore, it will open the list of all relevant layers available/uploaded on Geoserver. The datastore is a way to group layers according to themes, for example, if the layer ‘Roads’ is required to be added, click on “Transport Network” and it will open up all transport network related layers.
• Scroll down to layer “Roads”, and click on “Add to map” button below the particular layer as shown in Figure.3.
• This will add the layer to the Map and also show it in the layer panel on the right as added. This function will provide convenience to keep track of the layers which are only required to perform the analysis and to avoid endlessly scrolling through the whole list every time.

To add and manage the layers on your map:

• Add layer: Click the "Add to Map" button below the layer to add the chosen layer to the map. This will add it both to the map and to the layer panel on the right.
• Delete layer: To remove a layer, click the button next to the layer name in the panel, and then press "Delete" This will remove the layer from both the map and the panel.
• Hide layer Temporarily: In case of multiple added layers to the map, to temporarily hide some without deleting them, click the button in the left corner of the respective layer. This will temporarily hide the layer from Map/view.

Figure 4: Changing or Editing Layer Settings and Filters

• Changing layer Colors : As we can see, each time the Data visualisation of the layer (line, polygon, points) is different and in random colours. To change the colour of any layer
• Click on “+” sign on the respective layer >>>click on the coloured box >>> choose a desired colour from the colour palate. This will automatically apply the chosen colour to that layer in the Map.
• Adjusting layer Opacity: Similarly, in case of overlap of multiple layers, the opacity of the layer can also be decreased or increased by sliding the bar of opacity.

Figure 5: Change colour and opacity

The DRAW tool can be used to draw points, lines, and polygon on the Map and add it as a temporary layer. (It can be used while explaining or having a discussion regarding/on the Map.) Specifically polygon can be useful to filter data when performing the analysis in only a selected small area of the city.

Example: In the case of Analysis of ‘Roadways’ situated in a small area of `Chennai’:

• click on 'Create' tool >>> select the mode Polygon >>> click on 'Start Drawing' button as shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6 – functionality of DRAW tool (Create your drawings)

• Draw a polygon outlining the desired area where the analysis is supposed to be done >>> Type the new layer name as 'Area_of_interest' >>> click on 'Add Layer' button as shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7 : DRAW/Create tool – Editing your drawing

• This will add a layer of polygon named Area_of_interest to the layer panel. Remember this would be a temporary layer and with each time refreshing or closing the session , it will disappear.
• It is also possible to edit the shape of polygon but remember this is possible only before it is saved as a layer. /clicking on Add Layer button.

For editing:

• Click on Edit button >>> click anywhere inside the drawn polygon >>> move the boundary of polygon to edit the shape >>> to save these changes click on Continue >>> click on Add Layer button as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8 : DRAW/Create tool – Saving your drawing as a layer

Adding this layer of Area_of_interest helps in filtering the data. The steps to apply this filter is explained in next module.

Within the layer setting (‘+’ Button) of each layer, there are two options available to filter the data,(as shown in Figure 9)

1. Attribute Filtering : Filtering spatial data based on the attributes or values contained in the dataset of that particular layer is called Attribute Filtering.
2. Geometry Filtering : Filtering spatial data based on the shape, size, or spatial relationships of features is called Geometry Filtering.

Figure 9: Layer settings – filtering options

We saw in the previous module, how we can draw a polygon and add it as a temporary layer to the map. In this part, we will learn how to filter data based on this polygon/geometry.

We continue with the same example layer of “Chennai Roadways”, to filter and view only the ‘Roads’ which are within this newly drawn polygon.

• Click on “+” sign in the “Chennai Roadways” layer panel >>> Click on the Geometry Filtering option in the expanded panel of the layer >>> select the available option of the layer “drawn-area_of_interest” >>> click on "Add Filter" button given below as shown in Figure 10.

Figure 10: Geometry filtering - apply

• This filter will show in the Map data of “Chennai Roadways” layer only within the drawn Polygon.
• This filter can easily be removed if required by simply clicking on “X” button as shown in Figure 11.

Figure 11 : Geometry filtering - remove

Each spatial layer contains various information/values, like name, length, area, type, etc.(depending upon the type of layer) that are called attributes. Based on these attributes, we can filter each layer in the Map. e.g. filtering the layer of buildings based on its ‘area’, filtering the layer of roads based on its ‘type’ etc. Let’s understand this with an example:

I want to see all the wards in Chennai city, that has a population higher than 1,00,000:

• Add layer “Chennai wards” from ‘Datastores’
• Click on “+” sign in the “Chennai wards” layer
• Click on the select panel below Attribute Filtering
• In the selection panel below, select “POPULATION” (here all available attribute properties of the layer will show up)
• Select "greater than or equal to" operand in the next input line
• Add “1,00,000” in the
• Click on “Apply” as shown in Figure 12.

Figure 12: Attribute filtering - apply

This filter will show in the Map only wards which has a higher population than 1,00,000 as shown in Figure 13.

• It is possible to add more than one attribute filters (e.g. area, name) by selecting one of the options from AND/OR as shown in Figure 13, and repeating the process of attribute filtering as explained above.
• To remove the attribute filter click on “X” button as shown in Figure 13.

Figure 13: Attribute filtering – remove

It is also possible to apply multiple filter options for all layers by combing different criteria decided by the user.

The buffer tool can be used to create a buffer from a point, line or polygon, based on distance. The buffer layer created can then be saved and used as an input for geometric filtering. AN example is shown below:

• Add the layer 'Bus stops' and 'Kochi Street Light' layer in the tool. Find the buffer tool on the right highlighted in Figure 14 below.

Figure 14: Buffer tool

• Draw on the bus stops you want to create a buffer distance from like in the image below.

Figure 15: Draw the point (or line, polygon) from where you want to create a buffer.

• Go to the buffer tool >>> click on 'select a layer' >>> Put in a buffer value, eg. 200 metres, click on 'Create buffer' >>> Save the buffer layer with a name by clicking 'Add as a layer'

Figure 16: Select the target layer and create a buffer to save as a layer

• Filter the "Kochi Streetlights" layer by using the 'Buffer area' layer yu created under 'Geometry filtering' as shown in Figure 18 below.

Figure 17: Filter the target layer based on the created buffer

Now you can see that only two streetlights (in green) in Figure 17 are within the buffer area of 200 metres from your chosen bus stops. You can now identify potential parts in this radius to put new streetlights.

Figure 18: Filtered results on the basis of buffer