water sensitive design

3 October 202310 October 2023

Academic components of peduncle

This project aims to create an interactive real-world based game or platform, visualising complex data onto a stylised, simplified digital twin earth, in order to facilitate insight into how to take action in an uncertain world, at the end of expertise, through an ethic of care and curiosity. It is aimed at grassroots, everyday people and their engagement with data and knowledge, in a visual, 3D, gamified way.

Perpetually in draft and evolving, of course.

7 September 202313 November 2023

Connected data, connected people

In my previous post about the end of expertise, I made the point that the root concerns of conspiracy theorists are valid. The suspicion and mistrust of powerful players are valid. That, if governments and corporations are not going to make the actual shift then we need to make that shift. Everyday people must make that shift.

Here I want to add some comments about the role of structured data in making it easier to access relevant evidence, or supporting insights, and hence, maintaining accountability.

30 March 202311 April 2023

Earth sciences and the metaverse

I don’t know why it took me as long as it did to figure out that it’s not really the geospatial layer per se I am interested in, but the multitudes of earth science layers on top of that. Doh. Geospatial is, to my mind, attempting to use technology to see what various aspects of the world looks like, but it’s a bit static. It looks at what is. I want to see what moves, and how they play together, what changes. My current thinking is maybe this is called earth sciences? This means I must revisit everything! Which is fine, I was so stuck that this will be inspiring. 🙂

29 August 20223 November 2022

Raw highlights from INSPIRE report

https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/510cd3aa-32e4-11ec-bd8e-01aa75ed71a1/language-en

European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Penninga, F., Lutz, M., Minghini, M., et al. (2021) INSPIRE, a public sector contribution to the European green deal data space : a vision for the technological evolution of Europe’s spatial data infrastructures for 2030. Publications Office of the European Union. https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2760/8563

p6
Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) must evolve from complex and highly specialised frameworks to more sustainable, flexible and agile data ecosystems, lowering the entry level to non-specialists and welcoming an increased participation from less traditional stakeholders (e.g. open source software communities, standardisation bodies and early adopters) in addition to data providers and users.

6 September 20216 September 2021

Zandvlei, Demogarchy and Bitcoin

in draft.

I used to be on the Zandvlei Protected Areas Advisory Committee (ZPAAC) for a few years. We were a group of people, both volunteers, residents in the area, and City employees tasked with managing the estuary, or ‘vlei’ in Afrikaans, hence the name. It was heavily impacted by poor design and construction choices in the 60s, in the form of the Marina da Gama estate, primarily, but also inappropriate urban density upstream, both formal and informal (backyard dwellers upstream with insufficient service delivery, and not enough toilets). So it needed constant management – rewilding was simply not an option.

22 October 202022 October 2020

Beautiful minimalist city builder games

ThisIsColossal shared this beautiful game by Oskar Stålberg which immediately reminded me of my urban metabolism game (I mention it here).

26 October 2019

EdenHope Project

Outlining the steps to work towards an Eden Project in the Western Cape.

6 July 201911 July 2019

SAGTA presentation: The metaverse, gaming and the metabolism of cities; Building connection across boundaries

IN DRAFT

This talk was given at the South African Geography Teachers Conference (SAGTA) in Pretoria on 21 June 2019. The talk was well received and I found useful resources related to GIS. I hope to pilot a version of the game, or at least the data gathering and interpretation in a school project which would help update the geography curriculum too.

The presentation is in html and can be found here (link to follow) or downloaded in pdf here (link to follow).

6 June 201911 July 2019

Braindump: Metaverse, gaming and metabolism of cities talk

As soon as my talk appointments solidified I froze up with writer’s block, and the, to me, massive challenge of learning all the stuff just to tell the story of what I want to do, nevermind doing it! For a start, I would like to give the talk in Javascript to make it interactive and allow better transfer between platforms (I think … html and all that??), which is enough of a challenge already. So, to help myself unclog, a dump of the rough notes I’ve been accumulating. This post will probably change often, but stay messy, and each talk will get its own dedicated post as the focus will be unique for each.

27 February 201927 February 2019

Magicverse and urban resilience

The Fortnite, Water and the Metaverse post was barely cold when a friend sent me this article about Magic Leap, under the leadership of Rony Abovitz, and their Magicverse.

From the Magic Leap blog: “The Magicverse is an Emergent System of Systems bridging the physical with the digital, in a large scale, persistent manner within a community of people. “

“Essentially, Magic Leap envisions a future in which any location — ranging from a room to a whole country — has not only a physical presence, but also a digital one that takes the form of various layers. One layer might focus on health and wellness, for example, and another on entertainment, and still another on mobility.”