Using RPGs to Solve Environmental Problems

Tabletop part-playing games are virtually making strategic movements within an imagined environs, where small game pieces signify players and points that can exist moved across a space to different outcomes. Remember the kids in Stranger Things playing D&D in Mike'south basement.

Just these games can aid solve real-world bug, likewise. Open-source modeling software chosen Tangible Landscape, for example, allows landscape architects to combine augmented reality and spatial data to create and change a simulated department of land, something researchers take used to command diseases similar sudden oak death.

Tangible Landscape

Tangible Landscape was developed at N Carolina State University by landscape architect Brendan Harmon, acquaintance director of geovisualization Helena Mitasova, and statistician and geographic information arrangement (GIS) developer Francisco Tonini.

Using current map data and—in some cases—drones to create new map data, the system produces a CNC-cutting miniature replica of an area researchers program to study. A projector overlays information on superlative of the replica, and might include spatial information about tree density, water menstruation, or by wildfire paths. Small-scale wooden pegs placed on top of the replica can represent waymarks or new areas of development.

Tangible Landscape

If a researcher is curious about changes in tree density, for example, they can use gestures on the replica to instantly create values that are sent back to the simulation program to model. While the models aren't yet 100 percent accurate for future predictions, the layers of geospatial information gives a very close guess.

"The accuracy depends on how well the model has been validated against empirical data," says Tonini.

Modeling the spread of disease, for case, requires authentic spatio-temporal empirical data to ensure its validity. "Sudden oak death was particularly hard because the symptoms do not show immediately on trees and that can bias the validation process. Even so, we built our work on a previously peer-review modeling framework that had a skilful amount of validation already tested on it."

In a contempo application, Tonini and the team office-played as a forest manager, a landowner, and a conservationist who were concerned about a department of oak trees within Sonoma Valley, California, that might be susceptible to sudden oak death. The squad mapped out the locations of bay laurel trees, which are a known host to the disease, and began simulating their removal. Factors like money, time, and spread of disease were and then generated once the trees were removed from the area. One wrong move can derail a campaign, requiring costly fixes.

"I surprising matter is how different kind of people collaborate differently with the model," says Mitasova. "Some people don't understand that they tin can change everything most the area or move the parts around. It'due south really similar sketching in three dimensions, though."

Mitasova and Harmon have thus far demoed Tangible Landscape at industry conferences to neat interest. They hope architects and possibly even city planners will employ the software to model how changes in the environment, such equally rising water levels, might affect unlike structures or natural environments. Similar ideas exist, such every bit the AR-based Collaborative Design Platform, but Tangible Landscape is focused specifically on spatial information as information technology relates to the environs.

For now, the replicas are limited by size for portability reasons and the GRASS (Geographic Resources Assay Support System) GIS data systems can but run a few models at a time. Just with growing support, there are talks nigh allowing younger audiences to model outcomes.

"A lot of schools are interested in incorporating Tangible Landscape in afterschool programs," says Mitasova. "As a tool, Tangible Landscape is easy to share ideas with others and permit yourself to work on a design together."