Living On The Edge - Reinventing the amphibiotic habitat of the Mesopotamian Marshlands

Sammanfattning: The Mesopotamian Marshlands form one of the first landscapes where people started to transform and manipulate the natural environment in order to sustain human habitation. For thousands of years people transformed natural ecosystems into agricultural fields, residential clusters and other agglomerated environments to sustain long term settlement. Moreover, the Mesopotamian Marshlands, located in one of the hottest and most arid areas on the planet, formed a unique wetlands ecosystem, which apart from millions of people, sustained a very high number of wildlife and endemic species. Several historical, political, social and climatic changes, which densely occurred during the past century, completely destroyed the unique civilisation of the area, made all the wild flora and fauna disappear and forced hundreds of thousands people to migrate. During the last decade, many efforts have been made to restore the marshlands. However, these efforts are lacking central planing, coherent goals and deep understanding of the complex current geopolitical situation, making the restoration process an extremely difficult task. This dissertation project aims at providing strategies for recovering the Mesopotamian Marshlands, organising productive functions in order to sustain the local population and design a new inhabitation model, using advanced computational tools while taking into account the extreme climatic conditions and several unique cultural aspects.