From Observation to Action: Integrating Space and Satellite Data in an Ambulatory Experience of Climate Change

In 2021, at the height of COVID-19 pandemic, global climate summit COP26 was held in Glasgow, Scotland. Despite wide-reaching media coverage, many people in Scotland felt disconnected from this strategic and prestigious event. Contrary to the objectives of the Summit which were around empowering people to make significant social and political commitments to tackle issues like global warming in Scotland, the UK and Europe, there was a loss of agency with the pandemic holding people in their homes. With science communication and outreach activities curtailed due to the restrictions to social interaction, science and arts organisations were looking for novel ways to connect to their audiences and contribute to the empowerment of positive change. Out of this desire emerged AWEN - A Walk Encountering Nature - a mobile application for a distributed digitally-mediated experience of the environment, co-developed between The New Real research programme at the University of Edinburgh and Alan Turing Institute, and the Edinburgh Science Festival. The application design followed the Open Prototyping methodology and combined GPS and Earth Observation data with artistic narratives and soundscapes. This invited the users along a self-guided walk merging poetic prompts to action and encouragement to reflect and connect participants with their surroundings and the most up to date climate science. In this paper, we recount the process of developing, testing, launching and evaluating this project. We note technical considerations, challenges and constraints, in addition to tools and practices that enabled interdisciplinary collaboration between geoscience / Earth Observation experts, data scientists, systems engineers and software developers. Alongside sharing the key outputs from the project, we invite readers to experiment and discover the global power of AWEN by embarking on their own walk, anywhere on Earth.