Freeze For Future – Glacier Worlds

Climate change and glacier retreat are no longer a far-away future’s forecast, rather they are the present’s reality, also in Austria. Only in a few years, several glaciers in Austria will not be accessible any longer for the purpose of climate change education due to glacier retreat. Therefore, this project “Freeze For Future – Glacier Worlds” wants to use today’s window of opportunity to “freeze” the currently still possible glacier walks for future climate change education by applying Virtual Reality (VR). Moreover, the virtual “Freeze For Future – Glacier Worlds” enable convenient and easy “access to the glaciers” for numerous young people in climate change education settings without major organisational effort, financial costs, as well as an additional carbon footprint for traveling. Furthermore, this project enables young people with disabilities in the first place to experience and “access glaciers” (as well as subsequently other settings for Education for Sustainable Development) due to the VR environment.

Data from octocopter flights recorded by different laser scanners and cameras as well as subsequently processed with a complex software will create to the virtual three-dimensional “preservation of the glaciers” for this project at the time of recording. Furthermore, the possibility to visualize the glacier’s volume loss over time based on the repeated data acquisition due to the impressive glacier retreat, highlight this project’s informative as well as digitally explorative potential. In order to provide young people with an effective VR tool for climate change education, the input for the VR environment will be collected, created and designed by young people themselves. In an iterative process including evaluation and development, the prototype should develop into the final product over the course of the project. In total, more than 1,000 pupils will therefore participate directly and indirectly in the project. In this citizen science project young people will be supported and accompanied by national and international experts from climate change education as well as from the field of VR education and laser- and copter- technology. 

The virtual environments created in this project should enable more people to experience nature and thus the value of its protection. The Alpine glaciers, its level is approximately 10 years behind the actual climate conditions, show clearly how urgent it is to “Freeze For Future”, before it is too late.