The DGC is a project that introduces some important elements of originality

and innovation:

• It is an innovative project of survey, classification and mapping of the urban, agricultural and natural green heritage, conceived by a multidisciplinary working group

of agronomists, architects and engineers.

• It is a shared, interoperable and open tool.

• The database of the DGC makes it possible to query the thematic maps of the urban botanical, agricultural and natural heritage and soils, to measure their environmental performance and calculate the value of ecosystem services, to interact with other territorial databases.

• It is based on web 2.0, uses open-source products, and aims at the provision of public information in open data mode concerning the territorial botanical heritage.

• The database of the DGC is structured to dialogue - and not exclude (it is inclusive!)

- with the most sophisticated and in-depth IT products, owners of management and maintenance of the green systems on the market.

• It contributes to increasing the quality and control of urban planning processes.

• It is meant, through the possibilities offered by the network, to involve citizens

in the processes of acquisition and updating of botanical heritage data, with the aim

of promoting greater awareness of the value of vegetation and soils.


The DGC is a project with a high technological and innovative content and it is part

of the theme "Sustainable development models", as this way of collecting botanical and soil data allows for the measurement of the quantity, environmental performance and ecosystem benefits of the botanical heritage.

In this way the advantages of a sustainable management of the urban, agricultural

and natural territory are highlighted as an alternative to urban planning and territorial development solutions which envisage, for example, the useless employment of inert materials and surface waterproofing.


The value of the project lies in its innovative proposal which, in the light of new information technologies and territorial analyses, deals with the theme of knowledge of the botanical heritage and soils and their ecosystem value.

However, the novelty of this approach does not lie in the IT management and the sharing and publication on the web of data - which is based on procedures already widely tested and successfully applied in other contexts - but in identifying the performance parameters and the classification model able to constitute a reference standard for the municipal urban green balance introduced, for example, in Italy with the Italian Law 10/20131


The Italian law 10/2013 introduces a new approach with respect to the traditional model of management of green spaces in urban areas. It was a moment of discontinuity which accelerated the development process of a project that resulted in the DGC, as the low cost and easy to use instrument to be made available to administrations - and small ones

in particular - to fulfil the obligations of the law.

The tool aims at being inclusive, seeking the participation of all specialized or nonspecialized human resources operating in the area, interacting with citizens and economic and professional operators. An appreciable example is the project with the students of the Terzani middle school in Abbiategrasso (see Appendix “AMAGA GOES

TO SCHOOL - New green mapping project involving schools”).

An innovative project