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Viz4Climate + Sustainability: IEEE VIS 2024 Workshop on Visualization for Climate Action and Sustainability
Half-day hybrid workshop on October 14th, 2024: Morning
IEEE Vis 2024 Conference,
St. Pete Beach, Fl, USA
About
We welcome submissions to the first hybrid online IEEE VIS workshop on visualization for climate action and sustainability. This workshop aims to explore and consolidate the role of data visualization in accelerating action for addressing environmental challenges and climate change. Given the urgency and impact of the environmental crisis, we ask how our skills, research methods, innovations and visualization practice can help by empowering people and organizations. We believe visualization holds an enormous power to aid understanding, decision making, communication, discussion, participation, education, and exploration of complex topics around climate action and sustainability.
This is a hybrid workshop: you can present and attend online or in person provided that you are registered for the VIS2024 conference. Remote attendance has a reduced fee.
Read, download, or cite the full work proposal.
Please cite this work proposal as the following:
Bach, Chevalier, Kostis, Subbaro, Jansen, Soden: IEEE VIS Workshop on Visualization for Climate Action and Sustainability, IEEE VIS Conference 2024, St. Pete Beach, FL

Workshop Goals
- Collect research, case studies, examples, and experiences around working with visualization in the broad area of climate and sustainability. See our submission types below and submit your latest work.
- Discuss and explore the potential of how visualization knowledge and research can help address issues around climate change and sustainability by supporting stakeholders in monitoring, decision making, communication, education and advocacy.
- Understand challenges and opportunities for visualization research and practice, i.e., which are the problems the field needs to study and explore solutions for; and which are the gains we can drive for our general understanding of visualization from working on climate and sustainability.
- Build a community of practitioners and researchers across all fields of visualization and associated areas (e.g. machine learning, climate science, education, advocacy). We particularly encourage (future) collaboration among the attendees.
Besides brief presentations of the accepted submissions, the workshop aims to mostly focus on discussions and planning research through novel collaborations.
PROGRAM
The workshop will happen on October 14th, 2024 in the morning, FL local time. Exact timings will be communicated when available.
SESSION 1 (70min)
Welcome and intro
Topic 1: Storytelling and Communication (RECORDINGS)
- Local Climate Data Stories: Data-driven Storytelling to Communicate Effects and Mitigation of Climate Change in a Local Context: Fabian Beck, Lukas Panzer, Marc Redepenning
- Data Comics for Climate Change: Zezhong Wang, Stephan Gruber, Claire Herbert, Zandria Sarrazin, Michelle Levy, Sheelagh Carpendale
- Designing Visualisations for Enhancing Carbon Numeracy: Katerina Batziakoudi, Florent Cabric, Stephanie Rey, Jean-Daniel Fekete
- Questions, answers, and discussion
Topic 2: Immersive & Tangible (RECORDINGS)
- Eco-Garden: A Data Sculpture to Encourage Sustainable Practices in Everyday Life in Households: Dushani Perera, Nervo Verdezoto Dias, Simon Lannon, Julie Gwilliam,Parisa Eslambolchilar
- Designing Earth Mission Control: An Immersive Data Visualization Tool for Climate Communication and Decision-Making: Minoo Rathnasabapathy, Rachel Connolly, Phillip Cherner, Jaden Palmer, Dava Newman, Mark SubbaRao
- AwARe: Using handheld augmented reality for researching the potential of food resource information visualization: Nina Rosa
- Questions, answers, and discussion
COFFEE
SESSION 2 (70min)
Topic 3: Analytics & Transparency (RECORDINGS)
- Interactive Visualization of Ensemble Data Assimilation Forecasts for Freshwater Floods: Ameya Patil, Marlee Smith, Helen Kershaw, Moha El Gharamti
- Urban Computing for Climate And Environmental Justice: Early Perspectives From Two Research Initiatives: Carolina Veiga, Ashish Sharma, Daniel de Oliveira, Marcos Lage, Fabio Miranda
- Exploring the Reproducibility for Visualization Figures in Climate Change Report: Lu Ying, Yingcai Wu, Jean-Daniel Fekete
- Questions, answers, and discussion
Topic 4: People, Art, and Engagement (RECORDINGS)
- Cultivating Climate Action Through Multi-Institutional Collaboration: Innovative Data Visualization Educational Programs and Exhibits for Public Engagement:Beth Altringer Eagle, Elisabeth Sylvan
- Harnessing Visualization for Climate Action and Sustainable Future: Narges Mahyar
- Artists, Data and Climate Change: Distilled messages, multiple entry points, layered metaphor: Francesca Samsel, Bruce Campbell
- EcoViz: co-designed environmental data visualizations to communicate ecosystem impacts, inform management, and envision solutions: Jessica Kendall-Bar, Isaac Nealey, Ian Costello, Christopher Lowrie, Kevin Huynh Nguyen, Paul J. Ponganis, Michael W. Beck, Iklay Altintas
- Questions, answers, and discussion
Closing (10-15min)
Topics and Questions
The large scope and complex nature of the multi-faceted problem of visualization for climate action and sustainability is best addressed in an half-day dedicated, informal, interactive workshop that brings together diverse contributions, viewpoints, and reflections on the topic, followed by discussions.
The workshop encourages submissions around a broad variety of topics, challenges, and questions including (but not limited to):
- How to balance visual complexity, depth of information, and visual/data literacy?
- How to understand abstract and widely unfamiliar scales of time, space, and numbers?
- How to encode, inform and present efficiently uncertain data? How to deal with heterogeneous data sets (spatial, temporal, relational, multidimensional, 3D, 4D, etc.)?
- How to make model projections more accessible and actionable for a general public?
- How to tailor information and visualization to diverse audiences?
- How to work with policymakers and communities at risk?
- How to create empathy with current and future people and populations?
- How to support carbon accounting and monitoring systems?
- How to track and monitor the circular economy?
- How to support decision making on a personal as well as collaborative level?
- How to foster engagement and participation on a community level?
- How to leverage new and immersive technologies for analysis, communication, and awareness?
- How to train the creators of visualizations?
- How to prevent the misuse of visualization for this topic and provide for critical engagement?
- How to make conferences and our own research practice (e.g., computing power, physical materials, devices, etc.) more sustainable?
For some of these questions, we can start from the techniques and knowledge we have gained about visualization in general—others might require entirely new ways of thinking across information visualization, scientific visualization, analytics, illustration, information design, human-computer interaction, education, cognition, etc. Addressing these questions can lead to guidelines, collaborative platforms, visualization principles and techniques, toolkits, method- ologies, visualization activities, analysis methods, interactive spaces and experiences, games, and potentially many more.
Workshop History
This workshop builds on the 2022 Viz4Climate workshop at IEEE VIS 2022, co-organized by Helen-Nicole Kostis, Mark SubbaRao, and Marlen Promann.
Main contact: benjamin.bach@inria.fr
- Benjamin Bach, Inria & The University of Edinburgh, France / United Kingdom
- Fanny Chevalier, University of Toronto, Canada
- Helen-Nicole Kostis, NASA/GSFC & USRA/EfSI, USA
- Mark SubbaRao, NASA/GSFC, USA
- Yvonne Jansen, CNRS, France
- Robert Soden, University of Toronto, Canada
International Programme Committee
- Arnaud Prouzeaux, Inria
- Cee Nell, U.S. Geological Survey
- Francesca Samsel, University of Texas at Austin
- Isabel Meirelles, OCAD University
- Kalina Borkiewicz, University of Utah & New York Times
- Martin Hachet, Inria
- Michael Bottinger, German Climate Computing Centre (DKRZ)
- Nina McCurdy, NASA
- Ryan Watt, California Academy of Sciences
- Till Nagel, Fachhochschule Mannheim
- Tim Dwyer, Monash University
- Xinhuan Shu, Newcastle University