XR Storytelling for Climate Futures

Sheridan Tatsuno, Principal/Dreamscape Global, Co-founder/OneReality.com, January 29, 2020 update

In the last few months, global concern over climate disasters is rising fast so even major funds are opening climate funds to "look green" and avoid losing investors. Trillions of dollars are going into these funds and the flood of climate funding has just begun, so I'm sharing the latest announcements: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/exponential-tech-climate-action-sheridan-tatsuno

Besides climate finance, as an urban planner, business and fiction writer, corporate strategist and serial entrepreneur, I am promoting Virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) tools for visualizing, simulating, planning and telling climate stories and futures.

Recently, my business article on "Sustainable Development and Smart Communities: the Swedish Experience", was published by ICE Publishing in London. As an #urban #planner, I think #Sweden and #Denmark are 30-60 years ahead of U.S. cities. #Copenhagen is going #carbon neutral in 2025. #Sustainable #Development #Sweden https://icebookshop.com/Products/Energy-and-Mobility-in-Smart-Cities-International.aspx?fbclid=IwAR0G7dwxKBiDyqCGdjJ8IQ4OYg_hr-CIWTlwhtAoq7Fe1y4R2yBmVes4x0M

Hollywood and publishers have done a great job showing dystopian VR fantasy futures, but they have not yet shown how exponential technologies can visualize our current climate disasters. To fill this gap, I just released my fourth VR novel -- "Divinely San Francisco," based on Dante's "Divine Comedy" -- to imagine and visualize a massive firestorm in the Bay Area that wipes out a third of the East Bay cities, sending a half million refugees escaping to the streets of San Francisco. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1671245806/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_JUM-DbRG37D1H

I also released an epic poem, "CHAOS: A Climate Tale", about our times: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1656063581?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860&fbclid=IwAR0xxkuQ-XwlyL6KOyTC5lFySXXMluoh3CY1nLtOdmgOWlmf-PbqtiEAcOE

How could we use VR/AR and drones for monitoring the refugee camps? How would we use cruise liners, VR/AR, prefabs, and 3D printing to rapidly provide shelter? As climate disasters increase, we need to prepare by using fiction, VR/AR storytelling, simulations and gamification to imagine worst-case scenarios so we can develop viable resilience plans to save lives and property.

Why is VR storytelling and simulations so important for climate action? In early 2016, my Swedish VR company developed VR simulations of hurricanes, sea rise and flooding for our client, Copenhagen Malmo Port. Our developers -- all gamers who love creating disasters and mayhem -- said we could also simulate fires, explosions, and other disasters. As a writer and planner, their comments fired my imagination. I just needed a potential client.

Simulating Wildfires: PG&E's Camp Fire Disaster

In late 2016, I was pitching VR to PG&E, which wanted to visualize its 700+ facilities as part of a $2.5 billion rebuilding program. In late 2017, wildfires struck Northern California. This was the perfect opportunity to pitch my VR for disasters idea! So I suggested creating VR wildfire scenarios and visualizing how high winds could affect the path of wildfires into towns. Unfortunately, PG&E said: "We don't like to talk about fires. Perhaps later." In late 2018, the Camp Fire wildfires struck, killing many residents, destroying the town of Paradise, and sending PG&E into $30 billion bankruptcy. I felt bad for not persisting since our VR could have helped PG&E visualize where to cut trees touching power lines, simulate fires spread by high winds, and train towns and firefighters how to respond quickly. To prevent future fire disasters, I wrote this article about VR for Forest Fire Management & Recovery https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/vr-forest-fire-management-recovery-sheridan-tatsuno/

Recently, towns near Sacramento, California began using VR for training firefighters, which I believe will become mandatory since, like flight simulators for airline pilot training, VR is perfect for dangerous, distant, repetitive, and collaborative tasks. https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2019/12/12/cosumnes-firefighters-training-virtual-reality/

Simulating Hurricanes and Typhoons

After 5.0 typhoons hit Guam and Japan, Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico and Hurricane Florence hit the Carolinas, I wrote this article about VR and AR for Hurricane Resilience Planning and Disaster Recovery. Typhoons and hurricanes have already caused massive losses and damage. Japan was shut down for a week, which probably cost it $100 billion in lost economic activity, plus loss of lives and damaged infrastructure and property. Needless to say, Japanese insurance companies and cities are beefing up their resilience planning since Japan is plagued by so many disasters -- typhoons, floods, mudslides, sea rise, earthquakes, and the Fukushima meltdown. In all cases, VR/AR could be used for simulating, visualizing, planning, designing and recovering from disasters. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/vr-resilience-planning-disaster-recovery-sheridan-tatsuno/

How to Use XR Storytelling and Simulations for Disaster Resilience Planning

As my Swedish VR team has learned from our projects on sustainable city planning and construction training, VR/AR can be used for the entire disaster management process:

• Threat & Opportunity Identification: Cities, builders, insurance companies, businesses and homeowners can identify potential threats, such as wildfires, flooding, hurricanes, etc., using NASA and NOAA data, GIS, VR maps and previous disaster data.
• Scenarios: Based on these threats and opportunities, communities can develop a variety of best-case to worst-case ("black swan") scenarios with city officials and planners at a conceptual level, such as 100 mph winds causing massive firestorms or a 5.0 hurricane.
• Simulations: Using VR, planners can then simulate possible disaster scenarios so officials and citizens can visualize them, as we did by showing one-foot-per-second sea rise for 30 seconds in Copenhagen, which submerged the city. NASA and NOAA climate forecasts can be used to provide realtime and historical data on VR maps. Builders, planners and insurance companies can estimate the potential loss of life and damage.
• Training: Using the simulations, first responders can train on various disaster scenarios, such a 5.0 hurricane in Florida or wildfires in California. Not only frontline firefighters and other first responders, but all city officials, citizens and other towns and cities could train and prepare using these disaster simulators. Using the Unity and Unreal VR gaming engines, cities could gamify disaster training through hackathons to challenge teams of disaster experts and VR/AR developers to simulate disasters and prepare resilience plans.
• Monitoring: Using IoT sensors, satellite data, drones, ground cameras and other data capture methods, local officials can monitor disasters such as hurricanes and wildfires in real time. Moreover, they could even virtually fly, drive or walk through the disasters a la Terminator 2, which can be an eerie experience. Fire chiefs could inspect wildfires by flying or driving through the virtual simulations as they are happening so they can better coordinate firefighting efforts.
• Storytelling: 360 videos are already being used to capture the recent Camp Fire ruins and tell stories by the survivors. In the future, 3D volumetric capture can be used to reconstruct the disaster site for VR walk-throughs, public education, first responder training, and reconstruction planning.
• Analysis: After the disaster, satellite, drone, IoT, communications and other data can be used to reconstruct and analyze the disaster and first responder activities to derive lessons and develop best practices.
• Reporting: Live disaster reporting for the mass media and follow-up studies can be aggregated into disaster databases and provided to first responders, cities, trainers and government agencies so everyone can visualize and learn from the disasters.
• Public Education: These XR disaster databases would be valuable for educating the public, K-12 schools and colleges about disaster hazards and best practices for planning, training and responding to disasters. As climate disasters increase, climate training and education should be mandatory in all public schools.
• Reconstruction: VR/AR can be used for designing, visualizing and walking through emergency housing, new buildings, smart grids and other infrastructure after disasters, and involve homeowners, insurers and citizens in the reconstruction process. The goal would be safe, resilient, sustainable cities and communities.

So there are many beneficial uses of XR for disaster resilience planning, management and recovery, which I believe will be mandatory in the future since XR training and simulations, as we've seen in the airline industry, are much safer, cheaper and easier than using physical systems and equipment, plus trainees can run multiple scenarios even in the comfort of their homes. My VR gamer friends are particularly excited since they're getting tired of hit-or-miss video games and want to do something useful for society. As we say in urban planning: Forewarned is forearmed! But with XR, being trained is even better.