Bay Area Sea Level Rise and Wetland Change through time
Conceptual development to Installation ideas.
Technical development and prioritizing data needs
Draft Project Description
This project will take visitors on a deep time exploration of Bay Area sea level rise and wetland ecosystem change from the time when the Bay was a vibrant river valley 18,000 years ago to a flooded estuary 100 years into the future.
An installation of interactive visualizations, audio recordings, and physical objects will allow visitors to experience how a complicated dance between the sea and the land creates and sustains the landscape we live in. As the rate of change increases and the impacts to these systems become tangible, it is up to us to allow this dance to persist if we are to adapt to its dynamic conditions.
*For more background about the Creative Code Fellowship and this project see posts in this blog.
Overview Sketch: Central projection of the post-glacial sea level animation sequence on semi-transparent material. Mirrored interactive screens illustrating changing sea levels and wetland ecosystems around the Bay from present day to future scenarios. Sea level timeline mural relative to the floor gives the visitor a sense of the scale. Audio recordings of Bay Area residents' perspectives on SLR clipped from Rise podcast (http://searise.org Claire Shoen, 2011). Plant species in pots to transform the Grand Theater into a wetland!!
Bill Viola
Bill Viola.
Interactive Screen 1:
a) Present Day Sea Level, Elevation, Bathymetry, Tide Gauge, Human infrastructure/Dev, Restoration Sites.
b) Future SLR Scenarios: Low vs. High
Interactive Screen 2:
2 split screens a) Historic tidal wetlands vs. Present Day wetlands b) Future tidal wetland scenarios LOW vs. HIGH with restoration sites.
Feedback: Technical development
- Changed GIS platform from ArcGIS to QGIS (open source) to facilitate data processing for various needs/outputs.
- Need to determine the best web mapping development environment to have a common language among datasets and a common terrain from which to ask for assistance! Leaflet, CarrtoDB, ???
- Need to outline what web tools are available and realistic to learn and develop the 2 screen interactives in 8 weeks.
- Scope the possibility of using Processing to give the post-glacial sea level rise animated sequence some texture of water and movement.
Feedback: Immediate Data needs and scoping data production
Future Sea Level Rise Scenarios (There are many interactive viewers, but only a few downloadable datasets. These are usually raw outputs and require interpretation and processing.
High resolution terrain and bathymetry data for the Bay Area. Same issues as above. Open Terrain a solution? GDAL to help process raw files from USGS National Elevation Database?
Human development data: Key cities and infrastructure (roads, rail, airports) at sea level. Open Street Map? Mapzen datasets? Other interesting human development related data? (socially vulnerable communities, income levels, "highly developed" land use type, population density)....