Senior Design Projects

ECS193 A/B Winter & Spring 2021

Visualizing Climate Change

Email **********
Name Emily Schlickman
Affiliation UC Davis

Project's details

Project title Visualizing Climate Change
Background The general public often has a difficult time visualizing the potential impacts of climate change on their communities due to the inaccessibility of technical reports and maps. This project looks into how we might create a mobile app that would allow people to “step into” future scenarios of what the landscape might look like 10, 50, and 100 years down the line. The overarching goal is to help start more meaningful discussions at the community level about the potential impacts of climate change and how we might adapt.
Description I will provide spherical panoramic visualizations of various climate change scenarios on the landscape using a combination of Rhino (a 3D modeling software) and Lumion (a 3D rendering software), with advisory support from UC Davis landscape ecologists. The hope is that these panoramas could then be viewed using a mobile app and stereoscopic VR viewer, with users having the ability to toggle back and forth between visualizations and take a simple survey. Given the limited navigational controls of VR viewers, the app interface should be easy to use and data from the survey should be accessible for analysis.
Deliverable A preliminary test case for the app will be an installation which will be defined by three tripods of varying heights. Each tripod will house a weatherized headset and in each headset will be a spherical panorama of what the site might look like in the future.
Skill set desirable Experience or interest in VR and developing mobile apps
Phone number **********
Client time availability 30-60 min weekly or more
IP requirement Open source project
Attachment Click here
Selected No
Team members N/A
TA N/A