1) consideration or evaluation of the conditions. restrictions. and environment of a planting site. 2) consideration or evaluation of a construction or development site requiring a tree conservation or preservation plan. 3) consideration during a tree risk assessment.
Site analysis is a preliminary phase of architectural and urban design processes dedicated to the study of the climatic, geographical, historical, legal, and infrastructural context of a specific site.
The result of this analytic process is a summary, usually a graphical sketch, which sets in relation the relevant environmental information with the morphology of the site in terms of parcel, topography, and built environment. This result is then used as a starting point for the development of environment-related strategies during the design process.
A number of graphical tools for site analysis have been developed to assist designers in this task. Examples of traditional climate-related site analysis tools are the Sundial, the Sun Path Diagram, the Radiation Square, the Wind Rose, and the Wind Square. These conventional methods of site analysis are efficient in simple sites with irrelevant close obstructions, where the analysis can be reduced to the parcel at the ground level or even exclusively to its center point. More elaborated techniques, like Volumetric Site Analysis, can instead be used to study more intricate and obstructed sites like those of high and dense urban settings.