The Lozenets Park Use Case focuses on one of Sofia’s most important yet unrealized green corridors, designed to connect the city center with Vitosha Mountain. Although the Master Plan of Sofia designates this zone as a public park, around 90% of the land remains privately owned and largely deserted, preventing its transformation into an accessible green space.

The use case aims to assess the ecosystem services currently provided by the area and to model future scenarios where tree planting and greening measures could turn it into a functional urban park.

Heat stress assessment, air pollution removal and future plantings scenarios of Park Lozenets area

Using 100KTREEs tools, the project evaluated heat stress exposure, air pollution removal, and tree-level contributions to cooling, supported by high-resolution LIDAR data, orthophotos, and field observations. These analyses provide scientific evidence of the environmental and social benefits such a transformation would deliver.

The results underline the strategic importance of Lozenets Park as a cooling corridor channeling fresh air from Vitosha into Sofia’s dense urban core. Scenario modelling showed that increased tree coverage could significantly reduce local temperatures, mitigate air pollution, enhance biodiversity, and improve water absorption, while promoting mental and physical well-being for residents. Moreover, the study highlights potential economic and policy incentives, demonstrating the value of trees even on private lands and supporting the creation of collaborative mechanisms between landowners and the municipality. The Lozenets model is considered replicable for other similar sites in Sofia, such as East Park and Vartopo Park, offering a data-driven pathway for scaling nature-based solutions across the city’s privately owned but strategically located green areas.

This use case examines Sofia Municipality’s initiative to plant trees in schoolyards and kindergartens, transforming them into greener, more comfortable spaces for students while promoting environmental awareness. Initially conceived as an educational and beautification programme, the initiative now aims to expand its impact by opening schoolyards to the public outside school hours, improving access to green spaces in densely built urban areas.

The use case applies 100KTREEs services to evaluate the programme’s effectiveness through ecosystem services (ESS) assessments, including heat reduction, air pollution mitigation, and biodiversity enhancement.

Landscape assessment and heat exposure based on air temperature model.

By analysing tree survival, species distribution, and local environmental data, the project seeks to identify schools in areas with low greenery accessibility, where opening these spaces to the public would deliver the greatest social and environmental benefits.

Results from the modelling and 3-30-300 assessments reveal clear advantages in expanding the My Green School concept into a broader urban greening strategy. Increased tree coverage contributes to cooler microclimates, improved air quality, and greater biodiversity within school premises and surrounding neighbourhoods. The findings also underscore the importance of long-term maintenance, particularly during summer months, to ensure tree survival and sustained impact.

Socially, the transformation of schoolyards into shared green areas enhances community wellbeing, fosters outdoor physical activity, and strengthens the connection between citizens and nature. Overall, the use case provides evidence-based guidance for scaling and optimizing the programme across Sofia, aligning educational, environmental, and urban planning goals.

The use case focused on developing an evidence-based approach to urban forestry by identifying municipally owned lands suitable for new tree planting. The main objective was to locate and prioritize areas where trees could provide the greatest environmental and social benefits, particularly in reducing heat island effects, improving air quality, and turning bare soil zones into functional green spaces.

Using 100KTREEs tools, the team combined air pollution and heat modelling with cadastral and land cover data to map potential planting sites across the city.

Combined analysis considerig physical constraints and prioritizing locations based on aggregated risk maps.

This integrated analysis allowed for the creation of a comprehensive overview of municipally owned areas with high suitability for planting, while excluding locations constrained by root or size limitations.

The results provide a strategic foundation for ecosystem services-based urban planning, highlighting where new vegetation could most effectively contribute to cooling, shading, and pollution removal. By overlaying biodiversity, air quality, and heat exposure indices, the analysis produced a unified urban risk and opportunity map, pinpointing the most impactful zones for greening interventions.

Beyond the environmental gains, the findings support Sofia Municipality in optimizing its land use policies and developing a replicable framework for sustainable city-wide tree planting. This approach not only enhances urban resilience to heat and pollution but also strengthens the city’s capacity for long-term, data-driven green infrastructure planning.