The World's Fair

Well, Ben has beaten me to the punch on showing some of the marvelous pictures presented here at Paleo Future. But I've actually been interested in these images for the past two weeks (with a nod to BoingBoing), having had the chance to look at some current projects that aim to use future simulations to aid in things like urban planning or policy authoring (particularly if it can be aimed at either mitigating or adapting to the possible consequences of climate change).

So what's this about? Why is a geneticist looking into the academia of such things?

Well, there's actually a pragmatic reason at stake here. Essentially, it looks like the Arts + Science course that I'm involved with is on track for next year, and we've been looking for an apropriate lab-like activity that would allow our students to look a little deeper as well as a little "wider" when discussing issues surrounding sustainability. As well, we'd like the opportunity to possibly look at these things with an eye on local urban consequences due to the various levels of mitigation as defined by the IPCC reports (Climate change being one of the two key topics we hope to broach).

Anyway, this is very cool. For a general simulation, where we may have the opportunity to use our own Georgia Basin (for example) as our visuals, we got a chance to check out a great piece of software called METROQUEST.

In essence, this is a SimCity for real life policy discussion, in that it allows you to incorporate a wide selection of variables or urban choices, with the intent to see the effect it would have on your community in the follow decades. (hear this mp3 from the CBC for a general overview). In reality, it's used more as an urban planning tool for members of government rather than University or even Public School education per se.

For a better taste you can check out a toned down online version for the City of Guelph here.

There were a lot of interesting features with this software, which could really go a long way in helping our students to segment some of the theory we hope to present in the conventional lecture components. Also, its got great usability logistics (i.e. was fast and capable of re-evaluating projections almost instantaneously), and I'm especially curious as to what models they incorporated into its engine (so to speak).

It's only knock was that it didn't specifically have the element for adaptation to climate change, but just the impressive number of variables you can entertain was impressive and enlightening enough. Besides, the global warming aspect would probably make a great running narrative as the instructor (likely someone like myself) guides students through the program.

Anyway, definitely worth checking out.