Crafting Futures: Embedded AR visualizations for the transformation of urban living spaces

The current design and use of cities is not adapted to the consequences of climate change. It is scientifically known which scenarios are to be expected and how cities need to be changed in order to remain liveable and habitable. People often only react when they feel the impact directly; however, the scientific findings in the context of climate change are usually only available in abstract form. The project therefore aims to visualize such causes, consequences and interdependencies in the city in a spatially specific and easily understandable way. AR technologies are used to embed environmental and various urban data in the real environment. Residents can see and experience these visualizations on their mobile devices and thus develop a deeper understanding of invisible connections. In addition, future scenarios can be interactively simulated and realistically depicted using generative AI. Impacts relevant to climate change become directly visible. "Crafting Futures" combines scientific data and models with intuitive, location-based experiences to initiate the discourse on urban challenges.

Prof. Dr. Till Nagel from Mannheim University of Applied Sciences, Prof. Dr. Martin Berchtold from the Rhineland-Palatinate Technical University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU) and Dr. Martin Memmel from the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) are conducting research into this.