Each year at UBC, there are an estimated 10,000 birds killed through window collisions (UBC Sustainability, n.d.).

To birds, glazed surfaces appear transparent or reflective of the vegetation they want to fly towards. In response, UBC and the City of Vancouver have adopted guidelines for architects and designers which discourage large glass use and recommend strategies such as frit or film pattern designs to make glazed surfaces more visible and safe to birds.

Using data from the UBC Campus and Community Planning Department, the City of Vancouver, and field data, this GIS project aims to identify core institutional buildings of high bird collision risk at UBC with the goal of recommending buildings for the UBC Campus and Community Planning department to apply bird-friendly retrofit strategies.

This project uses a Multi-Criteria Evaluation (MCE) methodology to weigh and combine 3 criteria that affect bird collisions: the percentage of glazing on buildings, the density of trees within a 20m radius, and the density of soft landscape vegetation within a 20m radius. From this MCE, 32 buildings out of 172 buildings analyzed are identified as high priority for retrofit due to their combination of high glazing with a high total area of vegetation within a 20m radius. However, considering financial feasibility, I recommend that retrofit efforts should first focus on buildings like Biomedical Research Centre built in the 1980s as they already have ageing windows in need of replacement.

The data and analysis from this project only tell one aspect of the story, and on-site building specific audits of the bird collision risks are necessary before pursuing retrofit installations.