SudScape
Where Extended Reality meets Urban Flood Resilience
Surface Water Flooding is a great challenge for the London Borough of Lambeth. SuDScape streamlines flood management by utilising VR and AR technologies, ensuring resilience against climate change in Lambeth.
The XR platform empowers Sustainable Drainage Systems designers to visualise and experiment with interventions on-site in flood-prone areas, enhancing decision-making. Expanding into Augmented Reality, it engages citizens in the design process by presenting complicated mapping information in an easy to comprehend format.
project associations
Timeline
Nov 2023- Feb 2024
Project category
Design Innovation | Extended Reality
Project sector
Public Sector
MY CONTRIBUTION (GROUP OF 5)
Expert Interviews with Borough Representatives and derived insights
Interviews & Testing with residents
Journey Mapping (of a SuDS intervention)
Led Design & Development of AR Experience
Co-Design
Ocean Science
Place-Based Approach
Flood Mitigation
background & theme
The RCA Grand Challenge is the biggest single-institution postgraduate design project in the world. The topic of “Ocean & Cities” was aimed at bringing London closer to the ocean, exploring a range of design challenges at the interface of land and sea. The theme was based on RCA’s work as a UNESCO Ocean Decade Implementing Partner, supporting efforts to reverse the cycle of decline in ocean health. Challenge description
identifying the problem
To identify a pressing issue of the borough we delved into research via different modes, namely:
Secondary research to understand climate related goals of the council and current problems.
Interviews with the Climate Change & Sustainability leads at the council to understand challenges.
Guerrilla research with Lambeth residents to understand problems faced by them.
The XR Stream
I applied to be a part of the XR teams, which aimed at identifying problem areas better addressed with immersive technologies. My aim was to explore the potential of XR in solving problems of climate change and enhancing collaboration.
Surface Water Flooding is a great challenge for the borough. Sustainable Urban Drainage Schemes (SuDS) are implemented for its mitigation
response to the theme
Surface water flooding is challenging for both ocean ecosystems and urban life. It washes pollutants into the sea, poisoning marine habitats. In cities, it disrupts daily routines, water logging streets and sometimes homes. We scoped our focus to this dual threat after understanding how critical this issue is for the Council of Lambeth.
In case you're short on time, the following video provides the entire overview of the project! Enjoy!
opportunity identification
To identify the areas of intervention we spoke to the residents on ground and understood the current efforts by the council which further helped defining our focus area.
interviews with residents & the council
Interacting with the climate and sustainability experts in the council gave us insights on the current efforts to implement SuDS interventions as they are responsible for Mitigating, Preventing and Preparing the borough against Surface Water Flooding.
My confidence in initiating conversations helped in conduct research with residents gave the following insights:
Their daily activities are often interrupted due to flooding
They are unaware of what the council is doing to mitigate this.
Most of them did not know what SuDS interventions are.
decoding a suds intervention
To identify critical areas where we could intervene as designers, I mapped out and end to end journey of an intervention right from identification of a spot to the actual implementation.
Thus, we concluded that innovation in SudScape should stem from bringing pre-existing frameworks and information into new technology for better visualisation, collaboration and assessment for council members & enhanced involvement of residents.
design proposition
To identify the areas of intervention we spoke to the residents on ground and understood the current efforts by the council which further helped defining our focus area and propose interventions.
VR tool: Council & Key Stakeholders
AR Experience: Involvement of Residents
Visualisations before and after the introduction of SudScape
I took sole responsibility of prototyping the AR experience and explored Location Based AR in Adobe Aero
FEEDBACK & TAKEAWAYS
To understand how residents respond to our AR experience we tested it with over 15 people. However, due to constraints of time we could not extensive test and evolve the VR tool with the council but we took the opportunity of our exhibit to gather their feedback.
feedback from residents & experts
We conducted testing during a Farmer's Market at Herne Hill to gather maximum comments. The feedback was overall positive with more than 80% of the people confirming that they are keen on giving their response and more than 75% of them already do so in various other feedback mechanisms.
During our Grand Challenge exhibit we gathered feedback from experts and council members who appreciated the practical application of XR technologies beyond gaming and explained how such innovations can get plugged into the digital twin explorations already being carried out.
Key Learnings
Get in touch
Diverse Applications of XR
Before commencing the project my knowledge of XR applications was limited to gaming and immersive visualisations. However, here I explored how it can be applied for problem solving and increasing engagement.
Leveraging Architecture Skills
Despite not practicing as an architect, I believe my 3d modelling and visualisation skills are an asset, especially when creating experiences which are positioned in the physical environment.
Working in a Diverse Team
My team for this project consisted of a diverse range of strong headed designers who came from backgrounds like Fashion, Product and Design Engineering. I learnt how to resolve differences by practicing prioritisation and elimination exercises to enable decision making without our personal biases coming into picture.
Introduction to Unreal Engine and Polishing skills in Adobe Aero
Through this project I explored environment building and interactions in Unreal Engine while exploring its various plugins like Cesium. I also enhanced my skills in Adobe Aero by learning the design and application of geospatial experiences.
achievements
Top 13, out of 140 teams!
Our team made it to the top 13 in the grand challenge and also received extremely positive comments from all those who attended including the Lambeth climate experts, representatives from DEFRA, NOC, UNESCO, and Wandsworth Council. The final projects were also displayed at at the Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona as part of the UNESCO Ocean Decade Conference.
Let's get Designing !
ayushi.saxena@network.rca.ac.uk
