Bringing Climate Change Science to the Landscape Level: Canadian Experience in Using Landscape Visualisation Within Participatory Processes for Community Planning - Landscape Ecology for Sustainable Environment and Culture - page 121

7.3.1 Methods of the Local Climate Change Visioning
Process in Metro Vancouver 1

This research aimed to develop and test a process for local visioning of climate
change impacts and responses, using an integrated geomatics/visualization system as
a prototype for improved community planning and engagement on climate change.
More specific objectives, responding to practical and psychological needs of com-
munities and citizens (e.g. Kriegler et al. 2012 ; Moser and Dilling 2007 ) included:

• Making climate change choices more explicit in order to build awareness and
capacity for behaviour change, policy development, and decision-making:

bringing climate change implications home to people and their local

governments
• Addressing questions such as ''what would your local landscape look like if
everyone met specific carbon-reduction targets?'' (e.g. BC's GHG reduction
targets).
• Enabling the integration of diverse streams of information from the multiple
sources and disciplines needed to address climate change somewhat holistically.
• Illustrating various adaptation and mitigation strategies that can be assessed
against carbon reduction targets and other key sustainability/feasibility criteria.

The approach was to bring climate change science down to the local level
through spatializing, localizing, and visualizing information on climate change,
within an enhanced participatory process. The visioning approach harnesses the
power of 3D landscape visualization of climate change, supported by Geographic
Information Systems (GIS) data, downscaled climate scenarios, and environ-
mental/land-use modelling. The process builds upon early precedents addressing
more limited aspects of climate change (e.g. Cohen 1997 ; Dockerty et al. 2005 ;
Snover et al. 2007 ), and other scenario-based, modelling-assisted planning pro-
cesses using visualization (see Sheppard 2012 , Chap. 13 for a review). It draws on
the best available data, science, and best practices, as well as local knowledge and
multidisciplinary expertise, through workshops with scientists, practitioners and
community stakeholders.
Products included computer visualizations produced at a scale that matters to
decision makers and the community: their neighbourhoods and backyards. These
pictures of alternative climate scenarios over time show different levels of climate
change causes, impacts, adaptive responses, and mitigation measures in combi-
nation. Through the images, people can see, for example, the effects on their
community of unmitigated climate change (e.g. sea-level rise, drought, increased
fire risk) in their lifetime, or of ''complete'' resilient low-carbon communities with
renewable energy, walkable and more self-contained neighbourhoods, local food
supply, and adaptations to more intense rainstorms (Fig. 7.1 ).

1

Funded primarily by the GEOIDE National Centres of Excellence research network.