Abstract Ecological impairment is prevalent in built environment and habitat enrichment had begun in cities globally. Most commendable ecological landscaping initiatives are, however, centred around developed countries in temperate region. Thus the systemic approaches may be inept to capture and reflect the natural processes in tropical regions. This paper describes a novel attempt to address the deficiency by developing and testing the idea of using birds as a proxy to drive ecological landscaping in tropical cities. A range of a priori avifauna metrics were applied to measure the biophysical complexity of six exemplar strata in inner and periphery areas of Ipoh city, Malaysia. Data collected were analysed and the metrics were able to reflect biophysical complexity in each stratum, statistically. Additionally, a numerical rating index from "impaired" (0) to "excellent" (100) was also inferred from two reference strata, or "best performers", to provide urban landscape planners with a standardized comparative measure. Numerous intricacies emerging from the "best performers" are highlighted to inform ecological landscape planning and biomimicry design. The implications to the public, policymakers and other stakeholders are also succinctly discussed. The key strength of the system, known as the Avifauna-based Biophysical Index (ABI), is it fosters learning from nature. The system is open to the views of the local stakeholders and sensitive to the realities given that the benchmarks consider regional ecological and anthropogenic variability. The principles of the ABI system are universal since it does not advocate a "one size fits all" resolution. Hence, although the proof of concept was demonstrated in Ipoh, the ABI system is applicable to tropical cities elsewhere.

中文翻译：

---

用于评估和规划热带城市生态景观的基于鸟类的生物物理指数 (ABI) 方法

摘要 生态破坏在建筑环境中普遍存在，全球城市已经开始丰富栖息地。然而，最值得称道的生态美化举措都集中在温带地区的发达国家。因此，系统方法可能无法捕捉和反映热带地区的自然过程。本文描述了一种通过开发和测试使用鸟类作为推动热带城市生态景观设计的想法来解决这一缺陷的新尝试。应用一系列先验鸟类指标来测量马来西亚怡保市内和外围地区六个示例地层的生物物理复杂性。对收集的数据进行了分析，这些指标能够在统计上反映每个层的生物物理复杂性。此外，数字评级指数来自“ 解析度。因此，虽然概念验证在怡保进行了演示，但 ABI 系统适用于其他地方的热带城市。