As part of the IIASA initiative for schools and youth organizations, a class from the Erlgasse high school in Vienna will be visiting IIASA on 6 March to learn more about systems thinking, this time focusing on sustainability issues, and interconnections between Earth's systems.
The workshop will be led by IIASA climate researcher Jan Steinhauser from the Novel Data Ecosystems for Sustainability Research Group who is one of the developers of a soon to be released computer game “Climate Survivors” (click here to watch the trailer and read more about the game).
There is a vast amount of knowledge about the climate crisis, its impacts as well as the growing number of mitigation and adaptation options. The challenge, however, is to get people to engage and absorb this knowledge, so that they can act accordingly. Video games are one exciting way to talk about sustainability issues and involve people who may otherwise not be reachable. Games are also a great tool to depict the interconnections between Earth’s systems and demonstrate how changes in one system can alter another.
In this three-hour workshop, we will introduce school children to climate impacts, mitigation, and adaptation options as well as various ways to communicate them in playful ways. The goal is to engage the students more deeply with climate and systems knowledge by involving popular media and having them come up with game concepts and designs, and then help them to turn them into reality.