From Emotions to Maps: the exp-EIA Method at the Berlin Science Week

Marco Boffi, a professor and researcher at the University of Milan, will be among the protagonists of the Berlin Science Week with the exp-EIA project, an innovative method that unites psychology and urban planning. “I am part of an environmental psychology group,” explains Boffi, “which is the branch of psychology that studies the relationship between people and environments, and particularly the psychological effects these produce.”

For years, Boffi’s group has collaborated with Banda Rapida, a team of architects and planners from the Politecnico di Milano. Together, they have developed digital tools that allow for the collection and representation of data on people’s subjective experiences in urban spaces, measuring emotions, aesthetic perception, and sense of belonging to neighborhoods.

The most innovative aspect of the project, which is also protected by patents, is the ability to spatialise the collected information, creating genuine “psychological geographies” of places. “We don’t limit ourselves to an abstract analysis of people’s reactions,” says Boffi, “but we build maps that visually show the emotions associated with specific points of a neighborhood. This makes the results more comprehensible and useful not only for researchers but also for public administrators, planners, and citizens.”

These maps make it possible to identify, from a subjective point of view, the strengths and weaknesses of an urban area, thus offering valuable support for design decisions and territorial regeneration policies.

The project that Boffi will bring to Berlin is called exp-EIA, a name that plays on the English acronym EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment), the traditional “Environmental Impact Assessment.” “We,” he explains, “have added ‘exp,’ which stands for experience, to introduce the experiential dimension. The idea is to integrate into the assessment processes not only environmental and socio-demographic data but also the psychological experiences lived by people in those places.”

The exp-EIA method is based on two patents that allow for the spatial representation of the subjective aspects of experience. The system can be applied through various tools, including a web platform – developed within the MUSA project in collaboration with the Politecnico di Milano – which allows people to virtually explore spaces and evaluate their perceptions, and a mobile app that enables them to do the same while physically walking in a location.

Another innovation developed in the MUSA project is the “Luminous Table,” an interactive surface that allows for the real-time visualization of psychological data, digitally projecting it onto the physical model of an urban area. “In Berlin,” explains Boffi, “we won’t bring the table physically, but we will show videos that illustrate how it works. The goal is to allow participants to personally experiment with the tools and see how individual experiences can converge into a collective representation.”

Through the exp-EIA method, Boffi and his group intend to bring psychological sciences closer to urban planning, helping to understand how people truly experience spaces. “By analysing the data in real-time,” he concludes, “we can show how the experiences of each person contribute to building a shared map, which helps to empathise with the needs of others and make more informed and inclusive decisions.”

The exp-EIA project thus represents a step forward towards a more empathetic and participatory city, where planning is not based solely on technical data but also on the human experience of those who live in those spaces every day.