Visualise Spatial Planning Scenarios in QGIS with the AI Edit Plugin by Terralab

Duration: 11:14 1391 transcript words EN summary

Video summary

The video introduces the AI Edit plugin by Terralab, a powerful tool designed to visualize spatial planning scenarios directly within QGIS. Built upon the Nano Banana 2 engine and identifiable by its distinctive banana icon, the plugin allows users to work with various background layers, including Google satellite imagery from QuickMap Services, aerial photography, drone images, and topographic maps. To begin using the software, users must sign in via a dashboard to obtain an API key, which grants access to 100 free credits; however, these initial credits restrict usage to resolutions lower than 2K and 4K. Once activated, the plugin offers a range of preset prompts categorized for tasks such as cleaning images, adding elements, changing styles, detecting objects, and simulating specific processes like environmental changes or infrastructure development. The presenter demonstrates the plugin's versatility by transforming the Rotterdam airport area into a mixed-use residential zone featuring social housing, green spaces, and a lake, showcasing how users can define custom prompts to generate realistic urban layouts. The tool further proves its capability by converting OpenStreetMap data into detailed scenario maps and simulating complex events like sea-level rise, where low-lying areas are accurately flooded while bridges remain above water. Additionally, the plugin can add new infrastructure, such as a multi-modal bridge for cars, bicycles, and trams, automatically connecting to the edges of the selected bounding box. Users can choose output resolutions based on their needs, with higher resolutions available for printing but costing more credits, allowing for flexible planning from quick concept sketches to high-fidelity visualizations. Beyond simple addition or removal of features, the AI Edit plugin excels at modifying existing environments and enhancing image quality. The video illustrates scenarios where flat rooftops are converted into green roofs or equipped with south-facing solar panels with realistic reflections, and where former water bodies in Rotterdam's main streets are restored to include boats and tree-lined shores. It also shows how the tool can repurpose a street into a pedestrian-friendly zone complete with terraces and bicycle lanes. Furthermore, the plugin includes detection capabilities that create masks for objects like buildings and offers style presets that can transform raw aerial photographs into enhanced images with greater contrast or convert them into minimum cartographic maps, significantly improving visual clarity and detail. The final segment of the demonstration highlights the plugin's ability to integrate diverse data sources, such as local aerial photographs from PDOK Services, to create culturally specific scenarios like a Dutch polder complete with traditional windmills. The presenter notes that while the AI generates separate layers for each modification, allowing them to be superimposed and compared, the results are sometimes limited by the bounding box of the selection area. Despite these constraints, the tool successfully bridges the gap between abstract planning concepts and visual reality, enabling planners to rapidly prototype future scenarios ranging from climate adaptation strategies to urban revitalization projects. The video concludes by encouraging viewers to explore the various preset prompts and custom writing options to unlock the full potential of AI-assisted spatial planning in their own GIS workflows.

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[music] >> Hello, welcome back. In this video, I'm going to explain how to use the AI edit plugin by Terralabs for visualizing spatial planning scenarios. You can find the AI edit plugin in the plugins manager. The AI edit plugin is based on Nano Banana 2 and comes therefore with this cute banana icon. You can use the plugin with any backdrop. So here I'm going to install the QuickMap Services plugin to have a backdrop from uh the Google satellite. You can also use aerial photography or drone images and even topographic maps. Let's load the Google satellite image from the QuickMap Services. There it is. And another nice trick is to use the locator bar to find the address or city. So here I'm going to demonstrate it for Rotterdam. And now we're zoomed in to Rotterdam. Now we can click the banana to open the AI edit panel. There you need to sign in to get your key. Click the login button. And then type your email address. So in your email you'll find a link to log in to your dashboard and there you will find a key that you need to copy and then you can paste it here. You get 100 free credits and with the free credits it's not possible to use the 2K and the 4K resolutions. Expand paste key and then paste the key there and click activate. Now you can use the AI edit plugin. You can browse AI prompts that are preset and there are categories for uh cleaning an image, for adding things to your image, to change the style or to detect objects or to simulate certain processes. So you can have a look at these preset prompts that you can add to your own area. I will demonstrate a few later. Let's go to the airport of Rotterdam. There's a plan to change the airport into a residential area. Let's try to shape this with a nice prompt. Click write your own prompt. Drag the box. I wrote the prompt to replace the airport with a mix of social housing, suburb residential area, green and some water. Let's see what it make. >> [music] >> And here's the amazing result. Looks like a really nice pleasant area to live with the variety of housing and with a nice lake and enough green. Now let's see if it also can create a nice map out of this that I can present somewhere. I browse AI prompts. I choose style and I'm going to use the architectural site plan. Draw the box on top of the generated image and see what it makes. And there's the result. A super nice map. >> [music] >> Let's see if it can also modify OpenStreetMap. So I've loaded an OpenStreetMap layer. I draw the box and I'm going to use a similar prompt as before to change the airport into a residential area. >> [music] >> And here's the result. An amazing OpenStreetMap of the scenario that we made. Let's also try one from the simulations. Let's simulate sea level rise. I draw a box here in Rotterdam. Choose slightly higher resolution and there it goes. And the result's amazing. The low areas are flooded. The bridges are above which makes sense. And the low-lying areas are below the water level. Let's create a prompt for another future scenario of a new bridge. Click and drag a box in the map canvas and the prompt will be applied to that area. So I give a prompt to add a bridge for cars, bicycles, and the tram. I can choose an output resolution, but at this zoom level 1K works well. A higher resolution will cost you more credits. You can use the highest resolution for if you want to print the result. And now AI is doing the magic. Let's wait for the result. >> [music] >> And there's the result. Of course it's limited by the bounding box, but if we zoom in a bit we can see here that it did the job and it tries to connect as much as possible to the edges of the bounding box. Now let's move to another area of the city. Here in the center we have a lot of flat roofs that have a high potential for green roofs or for solar panels. Let's see if we can use some of the preset prompts for this. I browse the AI prompts and I can also use the search function. So there is one here for green rooftops. Then I drag the box and I click generate. >> [music] >> Now that looks lovely with all these nice green roofs. Now let's go for another scenario where we place solar panels on the flat roofs. Select the area. And you see that the prompt is quite uh detailed. It mentions the flat rooftops and that the panels should face south with realistic reflections. So let's see. >> [music] >> Now that's a cool result with a lot of solar energy produced in this area. But it will be a hard choice between the green roofs and the solar panels. And you can see that each uh result is a separate layer that we can superimpose on each other. In the past the main axis of Rotterdam were water bodies. Let's change them back to nice water bodies. I select here one of the main streets. So here formulate a prompt to replace the road by water and make the shores green, add some trees and boats. Let's see what it does. Now here's the result and that's very cool as you can see. We chose a higher resolution and here you see the boats in the water. Let's go to the next item on my wish list for the city. There's this nice street where people go out especially in the weekend but are disturbed by traffic passing the road. What if this would be a pedestrian area with terraces and some green? So try to select the road. I'm adding a prompt here to have uh pedestrians and green space and bicycle lanes. Let's see what it does. >> [music] >> Well, that looks really great. Look at this. What a nice street with all these terraces and just bicycles and pedestrians. And nicely paved, too. To demonstrate that you can also use other layers, online aerial photographs or local ones, I'm adding here an aerial photograph from the Netherlands using the PDOK Services plugin. And here we have the aerial photograph. And I'm going to write a prompt for this lake. And I would like to change the lake into a polder with agriculture and traditional Dutch windmills. Let's see [snorts] what it does. >> [music] >> Wow, that's very cool. A typical Dutch polder with traditional windmills. Let's zoom in to see more details. That looks great. Although I really prefer the lake. Let's see how one of the presets work for detection of for example buildings. I browse the AI prompts. I select detect buildings and in the prompt it specifies the colors to give to the buildings and the background. It creates a mask. >> [music] >> And here's the result. Let's check it with the MapSwipe tool plugin. And here we see that it detected most of the buildings, not all, but it goes quite well. Let's try another one to add some trees to this uh bare area. Add trees along road. Let's select this main shopping road. And there we go. >> [music] >> And the result is amazing. A lot more trees there. Next, I'm going to use an AI prompt to enhance this aerial photograph. So, I'm going to zoom in quite a bit. Here to this building. Click browse AI prompts and I choose to enhance the aerial photograph here. And the result is amazing. We see far more contrast and detail here. >> [music] >> I compare the two. It's quite some difference. Now, let's try one from the style category. Let's make a minimum cartographic map. And this is a really cool result where you can see the buildings nicely styled. And the trees there. Fantastic. I hope you've enjoyed this video. Stay tuned for more content. >> [music]