Category Archives: Media

CALP’s Visioning Guidance Manual

CALP’s Local Climate Change Visioning and Landscape Visualizations: Guidance Manual (Version 1.1) was finalized in July 2010 and now available in published and digital form.  This guide is intended to be used by local communities: decision-makers/practitioners, sustainability citizen groups, consultants, and others, to help develop resilient local communities in an uncertain climate change future.  The printing of this manual was made possible by funding from the Climate Action Secretariat and Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions.  Read more about how our guide is being used by local governments.

Full reference:  Pond, Ellen, Olaf Schroth, Stephen Sheppard, Sara Muir-Owen, Ingrid Lipa, Cam Campbell, Jon Salter, Kristi Tatebe and David Flanders.  2010.  Local Climate Change Visioning and Landscape Visualizations: Guidance Manual (Version 1.1). Collaborative for Advanced Landscape Planning, University of  BC. (25 MB pdf download: CALP Visioning Guidance Manual Version 1.1) or download a 5 page Executive Summary  of the Guidance Manual (1.66MB pdf).

Visualizing Climate Change – A guide to visual communication of climate change & developing local solutions

Carbon dioxide and global climate change are largely invisible, and the prevailing imagery of climate change is often remote (such as ice floes melting) or abstract and scientific (charts and global temperature maps).  Using dramatic visual imagery such as 3D and 4D visualizations of future landscapes, community mapping, and iconic photographs, this book by Dr. Stephen R.J. Sheppard, demonstrates new ways to make carbon and climate change visible where we care the most, in our own backyards and local communities. Extensive color imagery explains how climate change works where we live, and reveals how we often conceal, misinterpret, or overlook the evidence of climate change impacts and our carbon usage that causes them.

This guide to using visual media in communicating climate change vividly brings to life both the science and the practical solutions for climate change, such as local renewable energy and flood protection. It introduces powerful new visual tools (from outdoor signs to video-games) for communities, action groups, planners, and other experts to use in engaging the public, building awareness and accelerating action on the world’s greatest crisis.

This book recently received a review by ICLEI and was assigned the title ‘Book of the Month’ status.
The review was published in the November ICLEI in Europe eNewsletter and can be found under item number ten. 

Books are available at UBC Bookstore and can also be ordered online at www.routledge.com/books/details/9781844078202

4D Visioning for Climate Decision-Making: Strengthening the local climate change visioning process for communities.

This research project is a continuation of the Local Climate Change Visioning Tools and Process for Community Decision Making project.  Our aim is to develop a prototype for improved community planning to localize, spatialize, and visualize climate change effects using downscaled climate modeling, geospatial information, and the best available land-use models. Versions of the prototype process and tools will be tested in four case study communities across Canada:  in Greater Vancouver, downtown Toronto, the Bow River watershed in Alberta, and Clyde River in Nunavut.

Clyde River is an arctic Hamlet of approximately 1,000 people in Canada’s Nunavut Territory.  Arctic regions are seeing rapid changes in weather, landscape and lifestyle as a result of climate change, communities are geographically dispersed and culturally distinct from the central government.  Climate change planning in this context is especially challenging, and this project seeks to understand the role that 4D visioning might play in assisting communities and governments better adapt to the changes ahead.

Researchers from CALP are working with the Ittaq Heritage and Research Centre in Clyde River, and with Natural Resources Canada to collaboratively develop and model future development scenarios based on key community priorities.  Community meetings, radio shows, mapping workshops, and 3D modeling have all been used to communicate these scenarios to different audiences.

Future work will continue to share this work with relevant decision-makers in the Government of Nunavut and beyond, and to evaluate its potential usefulness to future planning projects in the north.

View the latest poster series from the March 2012 trip to Clyde River, Nunavut, which completes 4 years of collaborative research for this case study in connection to landscape hazards, climate, population, community design, land use, energy use and quality of life in Clyde River both now and in the future.

Download a 2-page summary of the project from January, 2011.   Other information may be available on the ITTAQ’s website (under their Projects page).

Read Laura Cornish’s MA thesis: Can 4D Visioning Foster Community Responses on Climate Change?

For more information on this project please contact, David Flanders David.Flanders@ubc.ca

Funded by: GEOIDE Networks of Centres of Excellence (Phase IV 2009 – 2012)
Project Leader: Dr. Stephen Sheppard
CALP Researchers:  David Flanders, Ellen Pond, Sara Barron, Olaf Schroth, Kristi Tatebe
UBC Students: Laura Cornish, Nick Sinkewicz, Jia Cheng

BC Hydro Theatre

The BC Hydro Theatre (or as CALP refers to it  as “the Decision Theatre”), will feature advanced visualization and interaction technologies to engage audiences in simulations of sustainability scenarios in Metro Vancouver and beyond. Groups will be able to “fly” to different locations, visualize the neighbourhood now and in the future, and manipulate information using wireless devices connected to large visual display screens in order to consider the potential impacts of climate change, energy use and sustainability. Reconfigurable screens will maximize flexibility and allow experimentation with the theatre technology itself. For information on the Theatre see http://cirs.ubc.ca/bchydrotheatre and for more detailed information please contact the Theatre Manager: Tim Herron 

This project was made possible with funding from Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), BC Hydro and other funding partners.  Please visit the CIRS’ website for more information.

Citizens’ Conservation Council Workshop

The Local Climate change Visioning Project uses realistic visual representations at the community scale to make potential future climate change impacts and alternative adaptation and greenhouse gas reduction strategies more explicit. Exposure to this work will increase the Citizen’s Conservation Councils’ understanding of climate change impacts, and adaptation and mitigation options, and enhance their ability to lead meaningful regional dialogue about solutions. 

Four workshops conducted by Kristi Tatebe and Dr. Stephen Sheppard were held between Jan 12 and March 31, 2009 at the following locations:

1) Vancouver Island Coast Council in Victoria, BC
2) Thompson-Okanagan Council in Kelowna, BC
3) Cariboo Council in Prince George, BC
4) Skeena-North Coast in Terrace, BC

Read the Citizens’ Conservation Council Final Report.