ABSTRACT
Meteorological-climatological observations started very early in Berlin. They can be dated back to the beginning of the eighteenth century and are among the oldest in the world (Pelz, 2000). The study of urban climate and the application of urban climate knowledge in urban planning were also institutionalised very early in Berlin – at the end of the 1970s in Berlin (West), environmental assessment that integrated urban climate considerations for individual construction projects were already being carried out (Sukopp et al., 1979; Kuttler, 1993). At the start of the 1980s, an active environmental protection policy started in Berlin. A new ‘Land Use Plan’ and the first ‘Landscape Programme’ were created. However, during the preparation for the development of the plan, it was apparent that there was a lack of a comprehensive and useable set of spatial information. The administration was largely unprepared for the task at hand. There was environmental data collected in many areas; however, there were no systematically prepared planning documents in existence to assist. This was the context upon which in 1983 the Research Project ‘Environmental Atlas Berlin’ that was sponsored by the German Environmental Protection Agency started. The coordinators of the project were salaried, and were given official positions. This was, at that time, a far-sighted action. The project was to be pursued with the following two main objectives:
1 to prepare and provide spatial information to be used as a basis for higher-level planning; 2 to give the general public access to information about the state of the environment.
