Digital Mapping and Demographic Challenge: a case study of application in an Andalusian Municipality

Depósito de investigación de la Universidad de Sevilla https://idus.us.es/ Esta es la versión aceptada del capítulo de libro publicado en: This is a accepted manuscript of a book chapter published in: Graphic Horizons. Volume 1 - Graphics for Analysis and Thought (2024): 17/01/2025 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-57583-9_9 Copyright: © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 “This version of the book chapter has been accepted for publication, after peer review (when applicable) and is subject to Springer Nature’s AM terms of use, but is not the Version of Record and does not reflect post-acceptance improvements, or any corrections.” Digital Mapping and Demographic Challenge: A case study of application in an Andalusian Municipality Marta Donadei1 [0000-0003-1620-1459], Juan Francisco Fernández Rodríguez2 [0000-0003- 3253-1191] and Esteban de Manuel Jerez1[0000-0002-6548-1699] 1 Dpto. Expresión Gráfica Arquitectónica, Universidad de Sevilla (Spain) 2 Dpto. Ingeniería del diseño, Universidad de Sevilla (Spain) [email protected] Abstract. Drawing and graphic representation is a powerful tool in any design process. As social challenges have become more complex, the drawing techniques used to address them have evolved. Therefore, digital tools such as the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) facilitate the management of complex information about landscape and society to develop a cartography able to improve decision-making processes through graphical representation. In this context, the aim of this paper is to analyze how the use of GIS tools facilitates the development of maps for the visualization of complex problems such as the demographic challenge. The study focuses on the case of Arroyomolinos de León (Huelva), a municipality affected by demographic decline where empty and abandoned housing is located. To this end, the creation of digital maps based on data from diverse sources of information is proposed in order to geolocate the empty and rehabilitated housing of the municipality. These maps allow to visualize the housing situation of the municipality through graphic diagnosis and could be used to define strategies for the activation of this vacant stock as well as the regeneration of the area. Keywords: Geographic Information Systems (GIS); Digital Cartography; Demographic Challenge 1 Introduction Drawing and graphic representation is a powerful tool at any design process with direct impact on the way we approach problems and make proposals to afford them. Over time, traditional drawing techniques have been replaced by digital techniques. Thus, these ultimate techniques have become more complex, as well as the challenges presented by society. In this context, digital tools such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) facilitate the management of complex information in an urban scale. Thus, data about territory and society can be converted into cartography able to facilitate their graphic representation and visualization, to improve decision-making processes [1]. Therefore, GIS tools represent a new paradigm in the field of mapping, providing to data a graphic form able to make it visible and facilitating the integration of multidimensional approaches in any study [2]. 2 2 Purpose and methodological approach The purpose of this paper is to analyze the use of GIS tools for the graphical representation within a complex decision-making process. Therefore, a work methodology is proposed, which could be putted into practice in different contexts. The case study selected to develop this methodology is the Huelva municipality of Arroyomolinos de León, linked to the REVIVE research project funded by the Junta de Andalucía (Andalusian Regional Government). This research project aims at contributing to the definition of strategies for the revitalization of Andalusian rural areas affected by demographic decline. In this context, a map for the diagnosis of the situation of housing, empty and rehabilitated, is developed in order to improve the knowledge about the housing stock of the municipality. The work process stablished to reach this goal is divided in two points: 1. Detect empty housing in the municipality through the crossing of databases on the GIS tool [3]. 2. Geolocate the rehabilitated houses in the municipality through the Funding Regional Programs of Rehabilitation of the Junta de Andalucía, using the GIS tool. All this data allows generating a cartographic that facilitates the graphic representation and visualization of the existing housing problems in the municipality. Thus, the developed maps would be of interest for the definition of programs and strategies aimed at the mobilization of vacant housing or the rehabilitation of the detected stock in a poor state of conservation. Therefore, housing would be put into use in an affordable way to meet the general objective of the research project of attracting population in municipalities affected by demographic decline. 3 Case study description. Urban morphology and building stock The municipality of Arroyomolinos de León is in the northeast of the province of Huelva, Andalusia, and it is bordering the province of Badajoz. It is within the Natural Park of the Sierra de Aracena and the Picos de Aroche, one of the most important protected areas of the region. It has an altitude of 609 metres, a surface area of 87.08 km² and a population of 951 inhabitants [4]. According to the 2006 Andalusian Territorial Planning Plan (POTA 2006), Arroyomolinos de León belongs to the third level of the Cities System of the Rural Settlement Network of Andalusia. Its regional area is unstructured, because of different aspects: the low population density; the absence of medium-sized cities; the scarcity of Rural Centers able to articulate the rural settlement networks of the area; and the lack of roads of connection within the area [5]. Therefore, in this area we can find quite different dynamics. While the Aracena area has a central position and capacity to attract new settlers from the region, Arroyomolinos de León presents difficulties to reach this goal. The lack of connectivity hinders the access to certain services, and it is avoiding or delaying the development of dynamics of attraction towards centrality [6]. In addition, the municipality is avoiding 3 an overexposed situation to the touristification suffered by the central area of the “Sierra Morena-Los Pedroches” sector [7]. Arroyomolinos de León is a municipality of recent creation. Its urban morphology is developed along the A-434 road, which cross the municipality in a linear way. Delving into its urban structure, certain blocks with poor living conditions have been detected, due to the segregation of the initial plots until their clogged, presenting conditions under the minimum of habitability demanded. In addition, the poor situation about energy efficiency in the building stock of the municipality is detected. In Spain, a Basic Building Standards Regulation was not developed until 1977, when the NBE-CT-79 regulation was approved. This mandatory document defined the regulation about thermal conditions in buildings. In the case study analyzed, the 19.8% of the dwellings were built between 1941 and 1960, and the 46.9% of the dwellings were built between 1961 and 1980 [8]. Therefore, most of the stock of buildings in this municipality present deficiencies on their environmental comfort conditions, unless the buildings fully rehabilitated after the approval of the Technical Building Code 2006 (CTE-2006). 4 Results In the Andalusian and Spanish rural areas, a significant stock of empty housing is detected, much of it in a poor state of conservation. While the supply of affordable housing able to attract population is scarced [9]. In this context, obtaining adequate information about this stock is a key point to design complex strategies able to put the activation and rehabilitation of vacant housing in the midpoint of public policies. To this end, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) allow to generate useful cartographic bases to improve decision-making and negotiation processes, facilitating the definition of strategies of putting into use abandoned housing by local authorities. The effectiveness of the maps generated through information from different nature would be closely linked to the quantity and quality of the data recollected. 4.1 Vacant housing detection Three dissimilar sources of information have been used to carry out the work of detecting the vacant housing of the municipality chosen as a case study: the official website of the cadastre, the municipal register of censed population and the water supply company of the municipality. This information is transferred to the GIS software used to carry out the study (QGIS, open access), obtaining two different groups of results: the development of a coordinated database in the aforementioned software, obtained from different sources of information; the creation of a cartography associated with this information that allows the graphic representation and visualization of the empty houses detected in the municipality according to different parameters. Based on these two categories, we structure the results achieved in two sub-sections. Development of a coordinated GIS database 4 The first data included in the GIS software would be the cadastral information. The data is downloaded in a QGIS-compliant shapefile format from the official website of cadastral. This file establishes a relationship between graphic entities that represent the different plots of the municipality and a database that associates information to each of them. The data provided by this database are cadastral reference; postal address (through number codes associated with the different streets); use (residential or other uses); height of the building (number of floors below ground and above ground). Based on this information, the municipal register of censed population of the municipality provides information contained in an excel file in which the postal address of every dwelling is linked to the information about registered family nucleus. To integrate this information into the cadastral database, the QGIS software allows to link external excel files with at least one common column of data matching the original database. This way, an adequate cross-referencing of the information can take place. In this case, the census list contained information on the postal address of the registered dwellings, that can be related to the street codes defined in the cadastre database. This process could be avoided if the census data is associated with the cadastral reference of each property, an unequivocal number that would avoid errors in the process and would facilitate an automatic cross-referencing of the information. Finally, the information provided by the water supply company is incorporated into the database. This data would contribute to find out which dwellings had consumed this supply in recent months [10]. To this end, the information provided, also in excel format, offers data that relates the postal address of the properties with the information about whether these dwellings have had any water consumption in the last 6 months. Cancelled contracts of this service during that time are also indicated. Following the process described above, the excel table about water consumption is imported to the QGIS database by cross-referencing the postal addresses provided. Therefore, the properties without water consumption in the municipality can be discretized. As it was noted previously, referring these data to the cadastral reference would be of interest. With this information included in QGIS, a database associated with graphic elements is obtained. Therefore, this database offers information about whether the properties represented have any registered family units or have had water consumption during the last 6 months. This information combined allows to conclude that empty properties can be defined when these two conditions meet, while potentially vacant housing would appear only when one of these conditions is presented. In addition, properties with no conclusive information provided are detected too (Table 1). CASE STUDY Total dwellings Censed dwellings Water consumption dwellings No conclusive information Potentially vacant housing Arroyomolinos de León 1814 794 1017 520 277 Table 1. Potentially vacant real estate studies. Source: Authors' own creation Map of vacant housing in Arroyomolinos de León All the information included in the database allows the creation of different maps, depending on the parameters to be highlighted. Therefore, the visualization of this information would facilitate the presentation of data, showing clearly where the vacant 5 housing or potentially vacant housing is located (Fig. 1). From this point, qualitative studies that confirm the situation of each property detected can be developed, in order to facilitate the characterization of this vacant stock and to propose effective reactivation actions. 4.2 4.2. Characterization of public actions of rehabilitation in the municipality Between 1998 and 2009, 621 homes have been rehabilitated in the municipality by the Funding Regional Program for the Housing Rehabilitation of the Junta de Andalucía. These actions produced a positive impact in the conservation of the traditional housing stock, as well as an increase of activity in the construction sector, improving the economical situation of the municipality. The interruption of this program in 20092 had a negative impact, especially because of the large stock of housing in need of rehabilitation located in the municipality, according to the data presented in section 3. In order to visualize the impact of the Funding Regional Programs of Housing Rehabilitation developed in the case study, the rehabilitated houses detected have been geolocate. To reach this goal, the data provided by these programs have been codified according to different items, to include them in the GIS database and obtain maps (Fig. 2). Thus, the phases carried out are:  Consultation of the different files available at the Headquarters of the Territorial Delegation of the Ministry of Development, Articulation of the Territory and Housing of Huelva (Rehabilitation and Architecture Service).  Systematization and codification of the information collected (Table 2).  Generation of a shapefile layer using GIS software (QGIS). Year Masonry, cladding, carpentry Interventions on roof Redistribution of spaces Energy Rehabilitation and Habitabilit y Structural Slabs Water supply and Sanitation 199 8 5 11 4 3 4 10 - 2001 9 12 5 6 9 9 - 2004 10 8 5 6 9 10 6 2006 4 8 2 9 7 1 2 2007 6 8 1 9 8 8 3 2009 6 8 3 10 6 2 5 TOT 40 54 20 43 43 40 16 Table 2. Types of intervention for each regional rehabilitation program. Source: Authors' own creation 1 Rehabilitation cases registered by year: 1998: 14 cases (2 of them unfavourable); 2001: 16 cases (3 of them unfavourable); 2004: 10 cases; 2006: 9 cases; 2007: 10 cases (1 of them withdrawn); 2009: 10 cases. Total: 63 favorable cases. One of these cases appears in two different years (2001 and 2009). 2 This may be due to different factors: changes in the guidelines of the Rehabilitation Programs developed by the Junta de Andalucía in recent years, as well as the lack of an adequate use of resources during the years of global economic crisis (2008-2012). 6 According to the results obtained, the evolution of the actions of rehabilitation developed by year can be evaluated. Therefore, during the first years of development of the public program (1998-2004) the interventions of structural consolidation of housing were the predominate, including actions on roofs and slabs, and more specific in cladding, partitions, or carpentry. Since 2006, in response to the approval of the CTE, interventions of improvement of habitability conditions or energy efficiency gained importance. Nevertheless, most of these actions should have been more complete in order to solve all the problems presented by the existing dwellings. Fig. 1 (left). Mapping of potentially vacant houses in Arroyomolinos de León. Source: Authors' own creation. Fig. 2 (right). Mapping of rehabilitated houses by the Funding Programs of the Junta de Andalucía. Source: Authors' own creation 4.3 Map of rehabilitated vacant housing Finally, the database related to the regional rehabilitation programs and the database created about vacant housing in the GIS software are cross-referenced in order to define maps able to show the rehabilitated empty housing stock in the municipality. Therefore, we can draw as a result that just the 15% of the rehabilitated dwellings are vacant (fig. 3). If the potentially vacant houses with no consumption of water supply are considered, the percentage is increased to the 20%. Thus, most of the rehabilitated houses through public funding programs are fulfilling their social function, although some of them are used by their inhabitants as second homes according to the data of water consumption. 7 Fig. 3. Mapping of vacant rehabilitated houses through funding regional programs of the Junta de Andalucía. Arroyomolinos de León. Source: Authors' own creation 5 Conclusions The conclusions of this study can be summarized in two points:  The use of GIS tools as a methodology improves the work of management of information in processes of analysis and diagnosis of empty housing.  This digital tool facilitates the representation and graphic visualization of the housing problem analyzed, in order to contribute to the decision-making process. On the one hand, the GIS software used allows to link data from diverse sources of information by cross-referencing in order to identify and locate potentially empty homes when there are no inhabitants censed and any water consumption. Therefore, the process of analyzing complex data is easier and more efficient. On the other hand, the GIS tool allows to immediately obtain a cartography associated to the data managed. Thus, the results achieved can be graphically represented, facilitating their presentation and visualization. This map of potentially vacant housing allows to make the problem visible and discuss different solutions in participatory processes of diagnosis and definition of strategies. In this way, the maps created in the case of Arroyomolinos de León allow to distinguish between vacant dwellings that are located in the central area of the municipality from those located in peripheral areas. Thus, the first ones can be 8 considered older, and their activation would be linked to rehabilitation actions. Besides, the map that shows the rehabilitated vacant homes allows to corroborate which of them have been repaired. Thus, the empty homes pending rehabilitation are clearly located on the map, which according to the residents of the municipality are usually affected by problems of poor living conditions (direct lighting or ventilation). At the same time, the maps created allow to determine the surface of the vacant houses detected, which is an important information to meet the needs of different models of family units (young people, single-parent families, families with children). Therefore, these maps offer a first approximation to information necessary to define actions of activation of empty housing as a key factor for the revitalization of municipalities in a situation of population decline. References 1. 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