Stormwater management has become a central concern of local and regional governments, bringing challenges and costs driven by a multitude of factors including land use change, aging infrastructure and projected increases in the frequency and severity of storms.
VISUALIZATION SUPPORTING GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE IMPLEMENTATION
Discussion of any of these factors rapidly becomes technical and complex, for many people involving unfamiliar concepts and principles working together simultaneously. Project 4, Non-hydrological benefits and citizen preference for green stormwater management strategies uses visualization to communicate the implications of less familiar issues of landscape change. A paper describes the process of developing the image sets.
- Calibrated images to explore barriers to green infrastructure practices
- Extract from Project 4 outcomes
To satisfy citizens’ expectations for their surroundings both today and in the future requires new communication strategies. Citizens are no longer satisfied by county commissions making investments without providing clear information, and individual commissioners rarely have the breadth of knowledge required to make their decisions with confidence.
A FRAMEWORK FOR GREATER CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
Stories and game-like learning tools build understanding of the system interactions underlying our visualizations. Stories are the foundations for how we understand places, they reveal our values that then shape our designs. Game-like interactions show us how elements in the environment operate, and can point us toward preferred solutions. Multi-participant serious games and interactive models take understanding of systems one step further, enabling participants to “trade-off” the things they value vs. the priorities of others.