Identifying opportunities for the ‘digital environment’

Aims and Objectives

Science provides vital evidence to tackle the environmental crises facing humanity, but its impact is often limited due to difficulties in interpreting complex and technical scientific outputs. Novel technologies can help stakeholders, policymakers, and the general public to understand these issues more intuitively. Immersive technology, such as virtual reality can bring environmental issues to life, building engagement and awareness; gamification can be used to identify and incentivise more sustainable choices, and policymakers can benefit from the application of machine learning to assess policy success and evaluate future choices. Despite obvious benefits, the difficulties of working across disciplines means that these opportunities are often not realised.

This scoping project will bring together specialists from the Digital Creativity Labs within the York University’s School of Arts and Creative Technology with the Environment and Geography Department to identify innovative ways to work on big environmental issues. Stakeholders from policy, industry and non-governmental organisations will be consulted to gain an understanding of their environmental priorities and the difficulties that they face when addressing them. This information will form the basis of workshops that bring together environmental scientists with digital creatives to co-design digital solutions. The solutions will be assessed to identify the solution with the greatest potential impact and achievability based on current available technology. A grant proposal will be written to fund the development of the solution idea that has the potential to have the highest impact and achievability in helping stakeholders address big environmental issues.