the catalysts to such culling occur or occurred as a
result of anthropogenic activities or by some other
means. Let us say unequivocally that interaction
design is a science, and an art, of compassion and
that saving lives above all else and incorporating sustainability whenever possible is a suitable
and critical goal for our discipline—resigning to
Lovelock’s prediction of the potential loss of roughly six out of every seven people and many species is
not an option.
The 2007 IPCC report predicts climate change
will have massive implications for global food
production and conditions of production, as
well as for water, coastal habitations, health,
and ecosystems. For the case of food production, “complex, localized negative impacts on
small holders, subsistence farmers, and fishers”
is virtually certain, and the latitudes at which
cereal production is viable will change depending on the amount of warming. Another salient
effect is the likelihood of “increased damage
from floods and storms” and the possibility of
coastal flooding and wetlands loss, depending
on the amount of warming [ 1]. These two factors and others in the IPCC report have implications for the many urban areas that are located
in coastal environments, not just in terms of
food, but potentially in terms of habitability.
Photograph by Eli Blevis
A changing climate and its associated implications in relation to this imply a need for the design
of digital networking and interactive technologies
that can help people at various levels—as individuals, small groups, governments, and global bodies—plan and prepare for the orderly adaptation
to these effects. Such networks will need to make
available data, visualizations, tracking, and predic-tive simulations about changing locations of food
production and threats to particular urban environments. A number of interactive systems could
potentially play a positive role.
In a characteristic fashion of design thinking,
we offer here a design problem-setting approach—
that is, we propose the need for particular concept
systems targeted at preparation and adaptation
to climate change and owing to insights based on
the IPCC report, primarily. What follows are some
speculations about the kinds of things the interaction design community can be doing.
Food production and source tracking. As an issue of
both sustainable supply and food safety, interactive
systems are needed that can assist various groups
of people to adapt to the changing suitability of
particular regions for growing particular crops and
other forms of food production. Moreover, ensuring
and tracking equitable food distribution to meet
basic human needs under these changing conditions is a matter of certain importance.
Dashboard earth. As an issue of preparation and
adaptation to changing climate, interactive systems
to ensure planning and preparation for how people
in particular locations can respond to changes in
food and water supplies and even to threats to the
habitability of coastal environments in particular
and other environments in general are essential.
Orderly absorption and evacuation. We will need
interactive systems that allow policy makers to
provide orderly immigration to or emigration from
environments in the face of the effects of climate
change. Depending on the scales of particular
migrations induced by climate-change events, policy makers at all levels—local, regional, national,
intergovernmental—will need the information at
hand to make informed decisions about orderly
absorption of environmental refugees and planning
for the possibility of the need for local populations
under their charge to evacuate areas that have
become uninhabitable.
Habitability index. Interactive systems that allow
access to data about the habitability of particular
regions and predictions about the future habit-
September + October 2010
