Global Health – A VR approach for building climate change awareness

Herausforderung: Um ein besseres Verständnis für die Folgen des eigenen Handelns auf den Klimawandel zu fördern, bedarf es geeigneter Medien die einfach und verständlich sind. Virtual Reality (VR) hat sich zu einem wertvollen Instrument im Bereich der Bildung für nachhaltige Entwicklung entwickelt. Allerdings mangelt es nach wie vor an praktischen Ansätzen und empirischen Erkenntnissen zur Förderung des Bewusstseins für den Klimawandel. Deshalb haben wir, in Zusammenarbeit mit Prof. Dr. Daniel Roth, in unserer Vorlesung Exergames die Studierende vor die Herausforderung gestellt:

Develop a virtual reality solution that confronts users in an everyday life simulation with the consequences that may arise if the behavior shown in industrialised countries is calculated on the entire population of Earth.

Datum: Wintersemester 2021/2022

Vorlesung: Exergames

Projektergebnisse:

Global Health – a VR approach for building climate change awareness

Team:
Jonathan Denzler, Florian Enders

Abstract: “The small things in life” is about showing people the impact of their everyday actions on the climate and thus planet Earth. We created a VR prototype that is set in a virtual apartment where the player has to complete everyday tasks like deciding on which groceries to buy or how to heat their apartment. Emissions of their decisions are tracked in the background and extrapolated over 50 years assuming every person on the planet would live like the player. At the end of the game, the player can see the impact they had on the planet and hopefully gain a new perspective on how their actions influence our climate.