The UC Santa Cruz Center for Coastal Climate Resilience (CCCR) and a team of scientists and science communicators at UC San Diego have developed an initiative focused on immersive technology that uses advanced hardware and software to simulate environments and experiences. The EcoViz project is part of a collaboration to address environmental challenges ranging from fire management to coastal protection with reef restoration.
EcoViz’s mission is to help bridge the communication gap by working with domain experts, community members, and policy makers to create clear and compelling visualizations of environmental data, according to Jessica Kendall-Bar, an Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellow from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “These visualizations depict data-driven science that can serve as the groundwork for fire management, reef restoration, and conservation decisions,” she said.
“Climate change and habitat loss are creating complex new risks for communities. They need easy and compelling access to the latest scientific data to create the practical and political will to adapt to these risks,” said CCCR Director Michael W. Beck. “This is the aim of our joint work on these state-of-the-art visualizations.”
To demonstrate the initiative aimed at making climate data more clear and engaging, the team developed three major visualization use cases, each tailored to illustrate complex, time-dependent environmental changes. Using a mix of cinematic techniques, scientific data, and interactive formats, EcoViz illustrates complex datasets ranging from coastal flood protection benefits and marine animal behavior to wildfire management.
Visualization showing the flood-protection benefits provided by coral reefs in Miami Beach, Fla., by the UC Santa Cruz Center for Coastal Climate Resilience. (Credit: 3D visualization by Ian Costello and Jessica Kendall-Bar. Hydrodynamic modeling by Camila Gaido-Lasserre and Borja Gonzalez Reguero)
According to the presenters, some visualizations were most effective as narrative-driven animations, while others gained traction through being interactive by allowing users to explore geospatial data and experience ecosystems virtually through immersive technology.
“Through varied approaches, this collaborative team has found that data-driven, cinematic videos with straightforward charts and minimal text annotations can synthesize findings most clearly,” said Kendall-Bar, also a CCCR fellow. “Videos can help diverse audiences grasp big ideas quickly, retain critical details, and are adaptable enough for use in broader environmental storytelling.”
By combining visual creativity with scientific rigor, EcoViz is helping to transform raw climate data into stories that can inspire informed policy and resilient climate solutions, according to Ilkay Altintas, chief data science officer at the San Diego Supercomputer Center in UC San Diego’s School of Computing, Information and Data Sciences. “As we integrate AI into scientific workflows that form the basis of decision-making, visualizations are key to making our models interpretable,” she said.
Funding for this work was provided by CCCR, the UC Climate Action program, National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, AXA Research Fund, FEMA, and USGS.
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