Connie Monroe clicks a button, flicks her wrist and watches as her neighborhood floods. The shorelines are first to go. Then, the baseball fields at Fleming Park. By the time seawater reaches the senior center, it has flooded streets and over a dozen brick homes. Monroe moves her head up and down, side to side, taking in the simulated (仿真的) view. This is what could happen to Turner Station, a historic African American community southeast of Baltimore, as sea levels rise.
Climate change presents many challenges to coastal communities and to those trying to prepare for its impacts, but one of the most basic is also one of the most vexing: How do you show people and convince them of a possible future?
Communicating the realness and immediacy of the climate threat is hugely important to climate researchers and those aiming to lessen its causes. But it's also the most important to communities faced with coming changes that are already unavoidable. These projects need public support and input. That's why Monroe and other residents (居民) are being directed to sit in metal chairs, put on virtual reality headsets and watch their homes flood.
Turner Station, a community which gets flooded easily, is trying to prepare. It has partnered with the Port of Baltimore, a few nonprofits and a local landscape architecture firm to adopt a range of tools and ways to communicate climate change to the public, because every person is different and every place is different.
The virtual reality program is only the most recent, and perhaps the most effective step. Virtual reality is an immersive experience that can trick the human brain into thinking it's real. But tricking people is not the goal of the sea level rise simulation being used at Turner Station, says Juiano Calil, one of the program's developers. ''The goal, '' he says, ''is to start a conversation and help folks visualize the impacts of climate change and the solutions, and also discuss the trade-offs between them. ''
