The climate lab at the University of Prince Edward Island is getting new recognition for a simulator that shows citizens how coastal erosion and sea level rise will affect their communities and their properties over time.
The CoastaL Impacts Visualization Environment (CLIVE) was winning awards and accolades a decade ago after the UPEI team developed it and took it on the road to eight communities. Now climate lab director Adam Fenech is on tour again with an updated version of the tool, offering higher-resolution imagery and a view of the whole island, and the reaction is just as powerful.
“I have to be very careful because it’s a very realistic visualization and people take it to heart,” he told CBC News. “I’ve had people react very emotionally to seeing their houses swamped with water, as you can imagine. In previous tours with the earlier CLIVE, I’ve had people actually crying as a result.”
It’s difficult and expensive enough to protect shorelines that Fenech said he aims to convince islanders not to build in areas that may be threatened by coastal erosion.
“My main message is, of course, don’t build so darn close to the shoreline,” he said. “Like everyone else, I’m seduced by the ocean, so I’d love to live right on the coast, but it’s not a realistic option anymore on Prince Edward Island under climate change, in many places.”
CLIVE “combines historical erosion data, IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] model projections of future sea level rise, aerial imagery, and high-resolution digital elevation data to develop analytical visualizations of coastal erosion and future sea level rise scenarios,” the UPEI website states. “By utilizing 3D game engine technology, CLIVE is able to communicate serious scientific information in a manner that is intuitive and immersive.”
The system allows users to “fly around the 3D environment using a video game controller; select different erosion and sea level rise scenarios; and navigate from any perspective, at any scale, to observe the changes to the environment over time,” the site adds, helping community members to “understand the real impacts of these often abstract phenomena.”
Fenech said PEI already faced about 28 centimetres of erosion when CLIVE was first introduced, and Hurricane Fiona accelerated that process when it tore through the province in 2022. “Fiona acted like a big great white shark taking huge bites out of our province. Certain places lost 15 metres in that one storm,” he told CBC. “CLIVE is the virtual reality, Fiona is the reality.”
