Climate change is an urgent problem with implications registered not only globally, but also on national and local scales. It is a particularly challenging case of environmental communication because its main cause, greenhouse gas emissions, is invisible. The predominant approach of making climate change visible is the use of iconic, often affective, imagery. Literature on the iconography of climate change shows that global iconic motifs, such as polar bears, have contributed to a public perception of the problem as spatially and temporally remote. This paper proposes an alternative approach to global climate change icons by focusing on recognizable representations of local impacts within an interactive game environment. This approach was implemented and tested in a research project based on the municipality of Delta, British Columbia. A major outcome of the research is Future Delta, an interactive educational game featuring 3D visualizations and simulation tools for climate change adaptation and mitigation future scenarios. The empirical evaluation is based on quantitative pre/post-game play questionnaires with 18 students and 10 qualitative expert interviews. The findings support the assumption that interactive 3D imagery is effective in communicating climate change. The quantitative post-questionnaires particularly highlight a shift in support of more local responsibility.

This paper presents a transdisciplinary multiple-case study, set in Switzerland, that was part of the European Fifth Framework Program project VISULANDs—Visualization Tools for Public Participation in Managing Landscape Change (2003–2005). The project sought production of new visualization tools enabling public participation in landscape management. In cooperation with workshop participants, researchers constructed three-dimensional (3-D) landscape visualizations to represent various scenarios of landscape change. The planning objective was to develop sustainable solutions for landscape-related planning problems in tourism, agriculture, and forestry. Two of the case studies produced implemented results. The research objective was to analyze the effectiveness of landscape visualization as a tool in transdisciplinary workshops with external researchers and local stakeholders. The research illustrates how the interactive construction of different types of landscape visualization may contribute to solutions for planning problems on local to regional scales through transdisciplinary knowledge construction, dialogue, and consensus building.

This study synthesizes two evaluations of a local climate change planning process in a rural town in British Columbia (Canada), which was supported through landscape visualizations. First, the impact of the visualizations, based on scientific environmental modeling and presented in three different presentation formats, verbal/visual presentation, posters and a virtual globe, was evaluated with regard to immediate impacts during the process. Second, the long-term impacts on decision-making and actual outcomes were evaluated in a retrospective evaluation 22 months after the end of the initial planning process. Two results are highlighted: according to the quantitative pre-/post-questionnaires, the visualizations contributed to increased awareness and understanding. Most importantly, the retrospective evaluation indicated that the process informed policy, operational and built changes in Kimberley, in which the landscape visualizations played a role. The post interviews with key decision-makers showed that they remembered most of the visualizations and some decision-makers were further using them, particularly the posters. The virtual globe seemed to be not a “sustainable” display format suitable for formal decision-making processes such as council meetings though. That may change with the further mainstreaming of visualization technologies or mobile devices. Until then, we recommend using display formats that can be re-used following a specific planning event such as an Open House, to ensure on-going support for effective decision-making over the longer-term

Building on the mystery/complexity/legibility/coherence model of Kaplan and Kaplan (1989) and up-to-date landscape visualization techniques, this paper presents a case study analyzing people’s aesthetic preferences for scenes with varying levels of enclosure created through vegetation. Participants were asked to view 48 computer-generated urban park scenes with different levels of enclosure and to rate them for three aesthetic preference factors: coherence, complexity, and legibility. The results are as follows: (1) If the visual and/or physical setting is enclosed, participants will give lower ratings for legibility than in open scenes. (2) Physically open scenes are rated as more coherent than physically enclosed scenes. (3) Participants rate complexity for physically enclosed scenes lower than for physically open scenes. It is concluded that enclosure as a predictor variable for landscape preference has a practical significance for future urban landscape research and designs.